*** ACCA P3 December 2016 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

Fair enough for thinking outside the box but I would think paperless environment is driven just as much – if not more – because of businesses reducing their cost base and due to advancements in technology…most people want ebooks etc rather than hard copy now because its more easily accessible storage wise and don’t care so much about saving trees

The three companies in question 1…

How did u plot them on the ashtridge model?

It was 8 marks I believe

6 marks for the very last part of Q1 I think (was in reference to role of finance team member re change management, project management, risk management and one other can’t remember)

@suger890 said:
The three companies in question 1…

How did u plot them on the ashtridge model?

I believe I said the paper company was alien business, the mobile app company was value trap and the other one I said ballast business.

@kris1502 said:
The Project initiation document or whatever it was and you had to state what was omitted and reasons why info should be included. I studied for this exam pretty hard but did not come across this at all.

Then the question about what a finance team member should contribute to change, project & risk management (& one other can’t remember) – where was this in the syllabus as I did not come across it?

2nd part of exam focused on narrow topic areas in my opinion. I look at Q2 (regression and time series analysis) having looked at this just last night but decided not to do because my calculator bat went! and I thought prob take ages with disseminating/analysing the info anyway.

Onto Q3 and this was e-commerce model – again fine with that but then seemed to focus heavily on e-procurement. Again I did not come across this in so much detail in my study (I know what e-procurement is but for so many marks this threw me).

Q4 was fair enough but any previous questions re cultural web was more open ended – this question was specifically to address staff development with relation to cultural web. Bit harder question IMO. Competency and learning development questions (2 x 5 marks) fair enough.

I did the Sep 16 paper and thought that was a very easy paper. Guess just depends on luck sometimes with what you get – what suits one person won’t suit another.

There was a past paper question on PID, I believe it was something to do with a project for a mayor implementing a new traffic system. I don’t believe the OpenTuition lectures mention it much though.

I believe the finance team member question was more from P1. Sometimes the P3 exam does include some topics from P1, i’ve seen past exam questions on CG and ethics.

I felt the same about Q2a. There were a few past papers and an article on ACCA website that had questions like this, one of them looked almost identical. However with 30 minutes left and a choice between Q3 and Q2 I didn’t want to spend time trying to understand and do the calculations.

Yeah, I don’t recall coming across e-procurement either. I think it’s just assumed knowledge or expects you to just develop your understanding of e-business.

In regards to Q4 I have to agree. Saw a past exam paper with a similar scenario but the question was more just “evaluate the culture using the cultural web” rather than having to relate it to another aspect.

@lauren7 said:
Really struggled with this paper, mainly question 1.

for the omissions part I used the kaleidoscope headings like timings, capacity, capability, scope…do you think I would get anything for that? seem to be way off from what people on here have said?

No they usually say contextual features and list out the headings for you if they are after the Balogun Hope Hailey Model. Model for part A was the BCG Matrix

Omissions was based on project initiation document. I drew a blank and really stuffed this one up.

@kbourne said:
Ddmoo the e procurement was in the it chapter. Its called upstream supply chain management. I had it on my to do list but only glossed over it. Seems they are spreading lots more questions out over the “last” chapters these days as in the old style of the exam, the 50 marker always used to cime from the first 7 chapters

Yeah I think your right I’ve looked at the technical articles and it was one of only 2 I hadn’t looked at by mistake (Project management explains PID and the learning development was the other technical article I hadn’t printed and read -bloody typical!)

Yeah the Linear regression was very similar to the technical article but I didn’t feel the technical article explained the time series part very well so thought also I’m best not trying to explain something I didn’t quite get myself 100% (interpretation of the numbers rather than calculations that is)

Yeah also agree P3 seems to add questions from other papers…ratio analysis, P1 Governance & Ethics etc

Yep I thought the same if you understand e-commerce and also understand procurement you should be able to have a stab at answering the exam question but few minor points like this I thought was not exactly fair i.e. I didn’t see any syllabus objectives saying must be able to explain e-procurement in detail but I will go back and check 🙂

i think the NPV was $492,000.we did that at F9 anyway.We needed net cash flows of which year 1 realised a loss of $220,000 beyond which postive cashflows were made.Discount year 0 by 1 (250k) and the others by thegiven discount factors.deduct the intial investment from the net discounted cashflows overall will give a positive NPV.the payback period was 4 years. even though a negative cash inflow would be made in year 1, superior posotive cash inflow in year 3 (300k) will payback the initial investment leaving a balance of 280k.Both the selected investment apparaisal techniques suggested that the project was financially feasible besides their inherent limitations. 5 marks only and must nit worry anybody

that was the only information which was available.anything else becomes hypothetical.ys the relative performance was based on their revenues against the whole market

Oh my were we asked to calculate the payback period too? I got same npv as you tinaboy but i did not notice payback was asked … easy marks gone since i am also doing p4

@fran29 said:
i hope you have better luck in this sitting.

This was my first attempt at P3 and I feel so annoyed. I studied hard but found that I was always questioning my answers throughout the exam.

When you sat it in September did you think you had passed or failed it… I’ll be worrying/hoping between now and 16th January.. its such a pity they make the exam so difficult..

I was not really prepared for the September exams due to family commitments but had I done exam practice then I should have been ok as I missed out an entire question so in answer to your question I knew I had failed.

This paper was more difficult due to the project management NPV element despite being for less marks, it through me off and wasted my time and therefore I could not spend as much time on the other parts as I would have liked so I ended up rushing and missed easy marks. There is a page in the Kaplan text book about the role of the account changing and developing to a strategic partner which I had gone through however time wasted meant these marks were lost as I couldn’t develop the answer and panicked about time.

The struggle is to pick yourself up and start again. Is the exam results out on the 16th of Jan? That is a very quick turnaround.