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Sorry to hear about your result in SBL. Maddening to be just 1 Mark away.
My suggestions are :
1 Ensure that you address the question requirements very accurately. For example a question could ask you to:
Describe
Explain
Evaluate
Compare
Advise
Write a report to various parties
Criticise
Summarise
CalculateEtc
Either alone or in various combinations such as explain and advise. The ‘and’ word can be treacherous as many candidates address only one part.
2 Ensure your answer addresses and uses the scenario. Questions are rarely theoretical and you are expected to focus on the organization in the scenario.
3 Try answering the question first using a common-sense approach. After that make use of models and frameworks to add legitimacy to your answer and, perhaps, help you to organise the data and derive an answer.
4 When comparing your answers or deaft answers to practise question answers critically appraise your answer with respect to the above points. Identify where you might have fallen short.
The notes are fine for 2026.
Not sure why you can’t access the quizzes as there is not usually a problem. Suggest you try a different browser to see if that works.
There is no easy answer to that question. You need to practise until you feel you are quite good at dealing with the information, understanding the requirements and writing an answer that addresses those requirements.
I can’t imagine that in a business question that x will be minus. It is likely to represent time, probably counting each year or each quarter. The regression line equation can then be used to predict the y value. If the actual y value is different then there is a variable between budget (ie prediction) and actual.
Linear regression is not mentioned in the APM syllabus, but it is assumed knowledge from MA and PM.
See p72 of our MA notes.
Did you mean to post this to APM? See BT Notes Chapter 1, Section 3.
With limited liability partnerships and limited companies, if the organisation hits hard times and has to go into liquidation, the owners of the organisation are protected. Creditors and banks can pursue only the assets which are in the company and the owners’ liability, but not the organisation’s, is
limited and protected. In contrast, sole traders and partners have unlimited liability for all the business’s debts.I can’t answer this without full access to the question.
Anyhow, we don’t comment on exams just after they have been set.
I can’t remember, and have no record off, all the syllabus changes that happened from 2019 to 2026. However, over the past few years there have been none of any consequence and before that I can’t remember being heavily burdened recording updates to our material. You are probably relatively safe, but as a precaution also read our notes because they are up-to-date for 2026.
Exhibit 1 mentions that the company has weak cash flow. Good cash flow is vital for the survival of businesses and I think the model answer makes a fair point that you should want any performance reporting system to report on that.
Your approach is as folows but I have added a couple of words here and there
1 always start with exhibits because they will [nearly always] frame the expected answers;
2 never ignore the exhibits;
3 [usually] get the points of the answers from the exhibits, [but more might be needed]
Exhibits are very important but often they need to be approached by applying some sort of model or theoretical knowledge. This is not just an examination in common sense. There is a substantial syllabus that requires study.
1 Essan: star = high market share and high growth rate. To maintain that position you have to ensure you keep your market share in a growing market so revenue growth rate is fine.
2 Yes, marketing spend is important (NB stars often said to be cash flow neutral because of the high marketing spend needed to maintain star position).
3 Problem children are unlikely to be very profitable because of their low market share and consequent lack of economies of scale. If thy are going to stay with the problem child (rather than abandoning it) high expenditure is needed and you should be anxious that this results in higher and higher revenue as you gain market share.
4 R&D can be important for problem children. One way to gaining a higher market share for the product is to bring out an improved, enhanced product so that you beat the competition.
I suggest you use the ACCA practise platform and also select some questions from the revision kit, just to give variety.
Revision kits usually give an indication as to which syllabus area a question relates to. However, many questions require a mix of skills.
In your exam, the dates will be current, so use the date the question says it is.
The bit I worry about is “…simultaneously copy the important points from exhibit to the response word.”. You will attract very few marks for copy and paste. You have to move forward from the question to a solution. O viously, what is said in an exhibit is important, but you have to react to that, use it, make comments on it.
If the exhibit said “Sales have fallen by 25% in 2026” Yyou get nothing by saying that again in your answer. Instead say “The steep (25%) fall in sales will put pressure on xash flow”. You could say “Sales have fallen by 25% and this will put pressure on cash flow”. Either way, you are making an interpretation and really using the information.
The question asks you to examine the three directors’ views so you have to concentrate on that rather than a fell MM analysis. Of course, MM could be useful eg in saying that a director perhaps underestimates the importance of a key player.
Prevention cost as you set out above is fine, but perhaps add staff training and indeed staff morale so that a pride is taken in the work.
Just think of appraisal cost as the cost of checking and testing materials, performance and the work done. Use the word ‘audit’ if you want to (eg auditors check accounts). Without that you wouldn’t know if the prevention measures are working effectively.
Appraisal will certainly look at output (eg testing 1% of production) but it can also appraise the effectiveness of the prevention techniques. So, if under prevention you have specified that raw materials supplied have to have a certain purity, appraisal might show the quality is below specification. You would then have to revisit the prevention stage and for example, change supplier to a more reliable one.
HTH
I think TrustPilot is more a business to consumer thing that business to business.
The example is wrong, but not in the way you thought. Gutenburg’s salary should be $100 million per year.
That adds 100,000,000 to the total wage bill and 1 person to the number of people.
The mean salary is always:
the sum of (Number of people x their salary)/number of people.
Note that the amounts in the example are in 000s