Blue Style Group’s CFO shares how Prophix One helps manage seasonality, automate reporting, and strengthen financial control across the business.
December 22, 2025
Blue Style Group is one of the leading tour operators in the Czech Republic, providing package holidays to more than half a million travelers each year.
With rapid growth and strong seasonal demand, the company needed a financial performance platform that could keep pace with the business. One that made planning, reporting, and analysis faster, more reliable, and more connected.
That’s where Prophix One, a financial performance management platform came in.
“What I love about Prophix is that in the morning, I can come in, have my cup of coffee, and within 15 or 20 minutes I’m up to speed with everything that’s going on,” said Stephen Hayward, Chief Financial Officer at Blue Style Group. “The financial health of the system is running by itself.”
For Hayward, that clarity changed everything in how Blue Style plans, consolidates, and analyzes performance across the entire business.
Few industries experience seasonality like travel. Blue Style generates most of its revenue and profits within three to four summer months, a challenge that puts unique pressure on planning and reporting.
“The seasonality of the business means the financial processes have to reflect that twelve-month rhythm,” Hayward said. “We earn everything in a short window, so our reporting and forecasting have to be precise.”
As the company grew, roughly 20% year over year, that number became harder to maintain with spreadsheets and standalone systems. Data lived in ledgers and Excel files. Reports took time to prepare and verify.
“It reached a point where we had to look at the business more top-down,” Hayward explained. “We had a tremendous wave of growth, and we felt nervous that we couldn’t manage or control it the way we wanted.”
After a while, the finance team realized they needed a tool that could grow with them: flexible, customizable, and able to integrate with their existing systems.
“We picked Prophix because it was something we could integrate into our current setup,” Hayward said. “It bridged the data from our financial systems and gave us the level of reporting we needed.”
Blue Style first adopted Prophix in 2013 for simple data extraction and reporting. Over time, that implementation developed into a complete financial performance management environment that now supports:
Before Prophix, the finance team ran most of its processes directly from accounting systems and Excel.
“It was very limited,” Hayward recalled. “You’re just extracting data from the ledgers and putting it into Excel.”
That manual process slowed insight and left little room for creativity.
“Prophix gives you a huge step up,” he said. “You can build logic and analysis on top of the data. You can be much more creative in how you look at the business.”
Today, the data is refreshed automatically every morning. Hayward and his team log in, review KPIs, and know exactly where the business stands.
“I can do very quick ad-hoc analysis to answer questions coming to the finance office,” he said. “And I have 100% confidence it’s correct.”
Blue Style’s operations depend on dozens of moving parts from flight schedules to hotel contracts. With Prophix, the team can model these variables together instead of in isolation.
“We’ve built quite complex budgeting models,” Hayward said. “We can play with variables before the season starts and see how everything washes through. We can plan the business in a very complex way, but as one unit.”
That’s a big shift from spreadsheet planning and linking 150+ calculations across departments and the associated risk.
“Anybody who’s tried to do that in Excel knows it’s a recipe for disaster,” he added.
For Hayward, the biggest benefit of Prophix is how its strengthened both the performance and perception of the finance team.
“It’s accelerated the professionalism of our department,” he said. “We’ve now migrated to Prophix One, where everything sits in one cloud platform with a single login. We can access budgeting, analysis, and the close process all in one place.”
That connected environment eliminates duplicate work, maintains data integrity, and ensures every decision is backed by a single source of truth.
“We’re not maintaining multiple systems,” he explained. “Everyone is focused on one tool. You don’t need to worry about data integrity because it’s all coming from one source.”
One step further than efficiency, Hayward said Prophix has transformed how finance shows up as a business partner.
“The tangible benefit is time saved,” he said. “But the intangible benefit is the sense of organization and professionalism within the department. It shows the business is under financial control.”
With that control comes credibility with boards, banks, and business partners and a foundation for autonomous finance built on clarity, capacity, and confidence.
“When you walk into a meeting with accurate, insightful data that’s already been validated, you don’t need to worry about errors creeping in,” he said. “Your financial agenda just keeps going up.”
His advice to other finance leaders?
“Think about how much effort will be saved managing operations and how much better you’ll look when you have accurate data at your fingertips,” Hayward said. “Leaders who don’t engage with tools like Prophix are going to find themselves working twenty hours a day, constantly stressed, worrying if the numbers will be ready on time.”
Blue Style’s story reflects what many high-growth organizations face: complexity, seasonality, and the need for control.
With Prophix One, Blue Style has achieved a finance model that runs more efficiently, delivers data faster, and supports confident decision-making.
As Hayward summed it up: “It makes the life of the CFO much easier and really let's finance lead the strategy.”
See how finance leaders are simplifying planning, reporting, and close with Prophix One.
