*** ACCA P3 June 2017 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

Q1, Q2 is pretty ok for me.

I am pretty screwed up for Q4. I use Bowman strategy clock for part a&b. for part b, other than bowman, I added demand conditions, factor conditions, targeting, positioning and etc.

Part c, for promotion, I use sponsor on car events, environmental events as the car is environmental friendly. They can advertise at car magazines and use their awards to attract customers. For place, I say open sales and service branch near housing areas. For physical evidence, I write the company can introduce test drive for customersand etc.

Just hope I can pass the paper then I can proceed my P6.

I had thought it might be PESTEL for this exam so I worked hard on those questions – and it paid off! I was delighted with q1 although I did think Political was a bit sketchy?? completely messed up on CSF, KPI’s and I never remember what IR is about!!

I did q3 as I had worked hard on Project management (our lecturer said it comes up often so I studied PM quite well) and that was okay. A bit of a strange project but I did back it as being a project (start/end date, budget, scope etc). Not sure about the cost/benefits?? Maybe increase in sales for the mud range?

I had to choose between q2 and q4 and now i’m questioning if I should have done q4 instead of q2. The numbers were really weird and i ended up saying to avoid Itras as they appear to be going insolvent… I think I might pass though.. fingers crossed!!

@kevikraze said:
I’m hoping that’s not the case as I also didn’t bother with writing the formulas, I just quickly worked them on my calculator and used my results in the answer. There was an answer in the BPP txt book to a similar question and they did’t show the calculations, rather just start talking about the answers. I think at P3 level its assumed that you know these ratios and how to do very basic maths so more important how you apply these

Yeah you’re probably right, but it depends.

Maybe you’ll only get half a mark full stop for getting the ratio right, or maybe not even one.

Maybe the BPP solution the ratio are obviously 100% correct so they’d still get credit because their figures right. But if you get it wrong, but show workings, maybe you’ll still get some credit. We can only guess it’s very hard to read examiners’ minds. I got all formula right except asset turnover use total assets over capital employed instead of sales over capital employed. Whoops.

The past exams marking schemes (last page in answers) says 0.5 mark for ratio calculations.
And I think is logical to show the calculations. By working them directly in the calculator there is the risk of making calculation error and without showing the working, the marker will see only a number which is wrong on one hand and on the other hand doesn’t know where it came from (since no workings performed in the answer sheet).

I thought it might be PESTEL and 5 forces so I worked hard on those questions – paid off well! I thought the paper was quite easy but is that just because we all practised so hard?? I had to decide between q2 and q4 as I did q3 straight after q1. Not sure I made the right choice but the financial analysis was quite interesting to say the least… definitely waived SOP off from Itras due to possible insolvency problems. It was an interesting question!! I liked q3 as our lecturer said Project management always comes up so that was another one I really concentrated on. Delighted – will also be surprised if I fail. Hope I don’t jinx myself now…

Question 1 seemed easy but it was quite weird in the end. After reading the requirements of PESTEL and 5 forces, I was delighted, but my mood slowly changed after reading the case study. Did anyone have problems identifying Environmental factors? There weren’t that many in there compared to socio cultural, which had much more. I linked MFPs strengths of ‘energy efficient’ and great customer service to the green consumers which also wanted a personal touch. MFP had the best customer service and that does mean having a good personal touch right? The fact that MFP were poor with it’s technology, I used the pension payroll bit against them, saying they need to implement a system which will increase costs. Did anyone do the same?

For the projects question I think I waffled too much and wrote down everything project related. Do you think if you wrote things for the project plan section but they are relevant to previous question, like the business case, you will get marks for it? I doubt it.

For the financial analyses, I used Receivable days, payable days, ROCE, Gearing ratio, current ratio, GP and NP, and staff to revenue. Basically explained the company had major liquidity problems, they made staff redundant as they couldn’t afford to pay wages, this saved costs which paid off loans and suppliers (to bring down the payables days), they also sold non current assets (PPe) and cash went down from 20 to 5 if I remember correctly. I also mentioned that receivable days has gone down, meaning the company has strengthened it’s credit control and this could mean they will ask for funds sooner from SOP, or ask for money up front due to their liquidity issue.

For section B I struggled to think of other factors and I ran out of time. Hope I did enough!

it was more than just the ratios you could have commented on the moving is revenue, cost of sale, administrative cost, and did any one take note of the movement in the number of staff.
in addition to the current ratio comment should also me made of the non-current asset most of it was made up of goodwill

I wouldn’t get overly bogged down about the environmental factors even if you mentioned them under social it’s fine as the tool is sometimes called a ‘PEST’ analysis where all environmental factors are in Social factors and all legal are under government.

What really matters is your analysis. Did you mention why that factor is significant? Did you link it back to the effect on the company’s strengths and weaknesses?

Likewise with five forces it’s all about justifying your analysis and why you think Customer power might be high or why you think supplier power is low. Even if the examiner disagrees with you, you will still be given credit if you were able to justify why you though supplier power was high, if really it’s low.

I put down competitive rivalry as high, customer power high, supplier power low, substitutes high and threat of entrants low.

Now it could well be that TOE is high. But even so I justified why I thought it was low because I said that we see the two new entrants are staring to struggling and the high levels of competition will put new companies off. I also mention how more focus on marketing and price wars will build up barriers to entry. So you see even if the model answer says threat of entry is high, I still will get some credit because I justified why I deemed it low in my analysis. That’s what you got to do.

Hi All,

hope you all will go through P3 this time.

Anyone can advise what question/topic was examined in March 2017 and December 2016
this may help me to pick some important topic for the exam September 2017sitting.

Thank you in anticipation

I raised the point that the software company had acquired loans to pay back suppliers (not good). Their PPE had decreased from 60k to 40k so raising finance not to invest in (profit generating) assets was a signal of dangers ahead. Effectively they were swapping more expensive debt (long term loans) with cheaper debt (creditor days) – therefore interest cover reduced and likelihood of attracting future inward investment (which may be required based on decrease in profitability) unlikely due to financial risk increasing (higher liquidity, higher gearing etc).

Agreed though – I would like to have seen more problems with them!

I thought the questions were fairly easy considering I had the syllabus down after so much revision. But then managing the time available and getting all the information into succinct yet appropriate answers is always quite tricky on these types of exams. I spent 2 hours on Q1 (as I did for P1 after promising myself I wouldn’t!) and whilst I managed to finish Q2 & Q3, I didn’t do much of the 10 mark part on Q1.

Fingers crossed though, I do think I managed to get a lot of the syllabus in and related it to the questions. After P1 and P3 in succession, I need a calculation based exam!

I think you probably do need to say if the power is low or high but you would still get marks for all the other points you made