SBL*** ACCA P3 June 2018 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

I don't know how I feel after that exam ?

Guys can anyone list down SWOT points? I couldn't find many, specially Weaknesses.

Also Five Forces question, was there enough data for 18 marks??

Q1 was quite tricky. There wasn’t enough information about the company’s weaknesses. I could only come up with one. The paper overall was quite difficult and I am a little disappointed.

I could only point out one. That’s all

Question one was very hard. 80% numbers and 20% narrative.... how is that possible to draw enough SWOT. I still couldn't find weakness.?

Question one was very hard. 80% numbers and 20% narrative.... how is that possible to draw enough SWOT. I still couldn't find weakness.?

Please share your 'weaknesses'

hello, i have put following weaknesses... 1.all leased assets are taken via credit (borrowings) interest rates could effect 2.they had significant devrease in car sales over period from 60% to 5% 3.most of their money (700m) is borrowed outside which can have big effect in case on negative exchange rates (which is also a threat) 4.almost all of their leases are via private sector, they are depended only on private companies that tend to have bad debts more then public sector

weakness I wrote: 1.Flexible payment option makes difficult to cash management. 2. overseas customers management if they refuse to pay tough to chase 3.Flexible payment options decreasing profit because if cutomer take payment holiday still need to pay the bank. 4. Overseas customers increase bad debt risk. That's all I wrote.

Yes, Q1 was really bad, hardly any information from the senerio and most of them were overlapping too. So donno if they consider dat and give a mark.

Just to ensure I used correct model: pls. confirm: Q.1 a. SWOT b. TOWS c. SFA Q.4.a. FIVE forces b. Acquisition Advantages n Disadvantages. Q. 2. a. Software package implementation: ITT, First phase, second phase, requirements etc. b. In house VS bespoke advantage n Disadvantages. 1. Weakness I mentioned the flexible lease payment policy is high risk in this ever changing world economic condition. Further mentioned customer credit check needs to be focused (not sure about what to mention, just wrote out of scenario!!!).

Anybody else surprised at the similarity between 1c and 4a? To assess suitability I used 5 forces as Q1 related to a foreign country and lo and behold so did Q4! Saying that, I saw Q4 asking for 5 forces to assess the foreign fast food market, so I probably should have used Diamond on Q1 SFA. Oh well, still a macro model lol

Good luck to everyone with their P3 June exam results next month. I took 4 attempts to pass P3............

I used SFA model in 1 c. Instead of putting ratio in acceptability, i have put in feasibility. will i lose full markss????

Very hard and different from past paper questions... I am shocked most students voted the paper was OK! for q1 weaknesses I put -high overseas borrowing and less turning it into lease revenue maybe lots of bad debts. - decreasing Car lease - highly dependent on private sector asset lease than the other sectors That's all ? really little text to draw information from and the strategic options I gave for TOWS was a disaster!

Strength: 1. World wide customer base. 2. Good CRM n funders/banks 3. Proper utilisation of fund resources n strong lease disbursement policy. In $800m disburse $800m. 4. Increased in lease funding in private n non-profit sector. Weakness: 1. Flexible payment of lease policy. 2. Customer credit check n lack of intermidiary (assumpted) Opportunity: 1. Government funding the university sector (public sector). 2. Infrastructure development lease funding. 3. Non profit sector lease finding. Threats: 1. Car manufacturing-self financing. 2. Government imposing tax n declaring premium rate activities. 3. Government intends to put restrictions over lending.

can anybody please advise?

No.

Hi Meena, hope u will get marks. Marker may deduct 1/2 marks for the mistake. But u will not be penalised much. After all it’s the last sitting..........we hv tried our level best. Hopefully marker will not be so tough in marking our paper! We can only hope! Good luck!

In Q2(b), simply advantages of OTS over bespoke were to be given? What about part (a)?

Thank you dear .. it means a lot..but dnt no if marker will take into consideration that its last sitting..and was SFA apropriate model to use in 1c.

I spent almost 1 month self studying. 1. Watched dinos lectuee 2. Read most selected technical articles 3. Skipped all the content tested in march(bcg job design project management) did not even read even a page on them 4. Did 2015 2016 past year papers I found the exam to be very easy!!! Q1. If you read the answer scheme for their SWOT and TOWS analysis, they have pretty similar and repetitive points. Some other pointers i raised: - company has good competence in acquisition... but marine is a new industry and they lack the knowledge in that industry and that continent - WO: car industry is being threatened... thats why they decided to move to the marine industry... but would it have been better if they done it locally first? - shareholders of marine was selling at a low price; negative goodwill - is there any possible ethical threats involved? - gov building more roads... but if leasing of car is more expensive... isnt it counter productive?? So maybe can negotiate with the gov with regards to the impending tax and restrictions. It may even hurt the non for profit sector leasing! 1b) Acquisition just use the SAF format, as recommended on their answer scheme. I also used the JSW model. I talked about change management, possible cultural clash, and the need to do porters diomand and pestel analysis should they proceed with the acquisition. For acceptability, i Calculated all the financial ratios and compared with industry average... must remember to explain all the ratios because management is "weak in accounting". Feasibility wise... does company has money? Guess so! And they are selling the company cheap. But need to investigate why they are selling so cheap since the management is only controlled by 3 people. For Q2, dino's webcast covered it. For part 2b, i reasoned why off shelf is better than bespoke - no time, urgency - high admin cost already; its a charity - 2 it personnel - do not need advanced functions Thus no need for bespoke I also did q4, thought it was an interesting question! There was also a past year question similar to this so i just recycled the points but i made sure that i was explaining in the context of the scenario! Extremely happy with my performance! Cant believe i pulled it off alone in just 1 month :) - singapore!

I found the exam difficult, finish the 3question on time. I did not find a weakness as well. However I thought there was a mention that customers paid a deposit then had to pay the rest in instalments so I assumed there might be a chance of default

I forgot to write "REPORT" at the top of the report for Q1a ,but wrote all other components in respect of the format such as To: From: Date: Subject Introduction Headings and short paragraphs and Conclusion. Would I lose any of the professional marks relating to the format ?

I don't know if I put in enough points, the scenarios didn't have much information just hoping for the best

Hey guys a little off topic here, during the last 30mins of the exam my black pen gave up on me and for some reason I didn't think of asking a possible spare one from the invigilator so I resolve to using a pencil! I know the rules stated very clearly but I was wondering could it be scanned anyway? I wrote as hard as I can and it looks very visible to me but not sure how it will shows up on the scanner.

@mhealk999 said: Hey guys a little off topic here, during the last 30mins of the exam my black pen gave up on me and for some reason I didn't think of asking a possible spare one from the invigilator so I resolve to using a pencil! I know the rules stated very clearly but I was wondering could it be scanned anyway? I wrote as hard as I can and it looks very visible to me but not sure how it will shows up on the scanner.

You may not get points for the things you wrote with a pencil. Why don't you bring at least 2 or even 3 black pens with you to the exam? I even have 2 calculators and 3 pens on me just in case.

Only able to manage to answer for 75%. Don't know what will happen?

For me. It was time pressure. I did not finished Q2(b) adv/disadv. Manage to write only one point for both. For the Swot weaknesses, I wrote the calculation low part. And high part for strength. SAF- for acceptability, I also wrote the calculation for Vlease.