*** ACCA P3 March 2018 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

Hey guys, I think the paper was ok but I would say hard again as it concentrated on the tiny areas of the syllabus particularly question one. I panicked throughout the exam as it was my first P paper and I kept looking the time based on all the stories people have said about time management.

I made sure I attempted every part of the paper even though I didn’t do well like I prepared due to panic.

In reference to the strategic drift, it was complex as I wrote I don’t think the business model was drifting but the sales channels as the profits and revenue didn’t go down like it should. Is that correct and the fact that the examiner made mention of increase in the interest of history and ancestors of celebrities.

Q1 : Strategic drift, Strategy Lense, CSF, KPIs, mission statement, Integrated Reporting.
Q4 : PID/project charter, Business Case, Benefit realisation review, post implementation review, post project review..
Q2 : Benchmarks, corporate strategy-BCG, Ashridge, parental approach
Q3 : Business process improvement on procurement ,Job design

Any comments? The questions were okay but couldn’t get the fact fr senario explained / linked properly due to time issue…

Hi All

How did you all find the exam?

It was a fair paper for me, for part a.) I mainly discussed SWOT for the 12 marks for evaluating the performance and included the strategic drift in the summary – which models did people use?

I suggested Rupert mainly used the lens of experience, as he was against try new things, i.e. website development. The new owners where very much the rational planning model approach, mission statement – corporate appraisal and environmental etc.

CSF & KPI mainly spoke about the VC was more profit driven etc, CSF – profitability YOY, grow market share, few others. KPIs- ROCE etc

Mission statement and IR was okay, spoke about how mission statements should offer value, strategy and purpose – the mission statement seemed to specific and didn’t address the above. Also, as it was the first mission statement, stakeholder may already have an ideal mission statement given the change over.

2.) I had Supreme holiday as a cash cow and heartland business, big profits, first acquisition so understood it well.

Virtual gym – question mark, huge growth potential, however slow to catch up in profit – can allocate and invest or diversify away.

Pro Drinks – Dog and alien business, ALG didn’t understand the market after failed attempts, slow growth and poor profits, should sell off.

Benchmarking – spoke about internal, external, functional and strategic, didn’t see it was only for the customer service part though!!!!

4.) Wasn’t my greatest attempt, post implement review i put was comparing the implementation to original plan, benefits realisation to original plan to ensure these were realised and post project review was comparing each part, i.e. initiation, plan, execution and control to what was originally set out.

Interested know how other people’s approaches to the Q’s!!

It was kinda hard. The first question threw me off balance.

No Pestel, no five forces, no ratios, no swot analysis, no value chain.
I was really disappointed and it’s a shame when you think that it’s one of the last P3 paper before it merged.

Even thought topics such as strategy drift, strategy lenses, csf, kpi was relatively okay. For this question it was hard to relate to the context in the limited amount of time.

I managed to answer all questions but failed to properly deliver a good evaluation and analysis required for a professional standard paper.

Hopefully the examiners will be lenient.

Thanks all – did anyone else do a SWOT analysis for question 1 part a) evaluate the current performance of the company over the 10 years? 12 marks, assumed 4 marks per heading? I spoke about the financial but mainly SWOT and how the strategy drifted from the market trends?

I also did a SWOT analysis for question 1a). I think it should work in this case. I messed up the definition of strategic drift a little, though I was pretty close – I described it as a ‘divergence from the established strategy over time’ or something along those lines.

For those who attempted question 3 – how did you find it? Do you remember what you spotted?

I basically chose it because I was even less prepared for the project management area. I was ready for smaller parts but not for a whole question devoted to that topic.

Overall, I’d second some of the above comments. The exam wasn’t bad but I chose hard anyway mostly due to very high time pressure (and of course, I could have prepared better).

As it’s my first session with professional exams (I sat P1 yesterday), I kinda feel I’m on the verge of giving up to be honest, even though I passed all fundamental exams first time.

The biggest problem is that I still don’t completely get the marking scheme as there are huge differences between ‘model’ answers from examiners, BPP or Kaplan and some tips on here or the technical article re: P3 marking scheme. For example, should introductions be included? Should they be concise or longer (because just dumping knowledge isn’t enough)? How can I ‘explain’ anything in short, concise points? It seems easier said than done. To me, ‘explaining’ always meant something longer and most importantly, understandable for the reader.

Another thing is that my handwriting is slow. I managed to attempt almost every part of the paper (except for those I had no idea how) but I still feel that’s an issue.

To be honest, I’m afraid I’d have to know every part of the syllabus, all technical articles and all responses from past questions *by heart* to qualify. That’s the only way to eliminate any ‘thinking time’ from the exam, and probably only that could allow me to finish everything on time and hopefully get it more than 50% correct. At least I’m fast with the calculator so maybe P2, P4 and P6 could be better if I’m well prepared for them!

Sorry for the rant!

I did manage to listen to ACCA webinar and were useful, they try to cover some topics and the way to write answer that could help in writing the exam

I thought some of the questions asked a lot for not that many marks. I did question 2 and 4.

Question 2a was portfolio analysis which most people would be familiar with, but it asked a lot for 15 marks. You had 3 companies and for each one you had to:

– analyse its performance
– decide and justify its place on the BCG matrix
– decide and justify its place on the Ashridge matrix
– suggest a suitable strategy
– justify whether the corporate developer parenting style is appropriate

I felt that was asking a lot of for 5 marks each! This should have been 18 or 21 marks imo.

Honestly felt the same as you for P1 , thought I wrote dribble but I passed it , I agree and said earlier to a colleague there is no amount of preparing that would allow you to be prepared for the questions .
However after passing P1 , I believe that if u understand what u are saying about the scenario u will do better than u think . Eg P1 I want even sure if the company was in a bad way or not but understood the lack of communication and ethics on the board , obviously was enough .
Keep going u never know !!

The previous session exam was better and the q2 was almost the same. However I identified SH as a star company and ballast business as it was high feel and low benefit an therefore could function independantly. GV was a heartland business.

For 1a I talked about the JSW model of incremental change > strategic drift > flux > transformation/demise but I’m not sure that was what the examiner was looking for. I made a few points relating to how the strategy stayed quite static. Outside of the company the number of bookshops was falling and internet sales were growing, but the company did not sell at all through the internet until 2015, relying on bookshop sales.

I didn’t use a SWOT as it was asking you to analyse performance from 2007 to 2017 so I didn’t think that a SWOT was the appropriate model to use. SWOT is for analysing the current strategic position, not for historic performance imo.

@cr333 said:
For 1a I talked about the JSW model of incremental change > strategic drift > flux > transformation/demise but I’m not sure that was what the examiner was looking for. I made a few points relating to how the strategy stayed quite static. Outside of the company the number of bookshops was falling and internet sales were growing, but the company did not sell at all through the internet until 2015, relying on bookshop sales.

I didn’t use a SWOT as it was asking you to analyse performance from 2007 to 2017 so I didn’t think that a SWOT was the appropriate model to use. SWOT is for analysing the current strategic position, not for historic performance imo.

I couldn’t remember strategic drift, but I saw in the scenario that BV Ventures uses the SWOT approach or something, so I thought, even if I gained 2-3 marks has to be better than nothing. I couldn’t even remember Ashridge, and after the exam, I remembered them so well, so annoyed with myself.