SBL*** ACCA P3 September 2016 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

Did not attempt Q2. However, I did Q3 - 4. My thoughts are outlined below Time - The company will require more time to effect the strategic change. If rushed quickly, there could be strategic drift. So more time is important. Scope - The strategic change will change the paradigm or business model of the company. Webfilms was mainly an Internet TV providing original content for subscription in English. Now it is going to start producing content in other languages and likewise offer broadband and gaming services. Readiness - Workers readiness, the workers are not yet ready especially the Creative director and his team who feel they are being demoted. This could affect the strategic change process Power - CEO has power and influence to effect the strategic change and this will result in the success (B) Hollow - Webfilms can outsource the translation of contents to a translating company Modular - Webfilms can outsource original program content to other content providers who can provide contents for all age group. The company specifically produces for teens and twenties. Virtual - Webfilms can collaborate with software programmers for its online gaming services. Q4 - Tangible and Intangible Benefits - So I calculated the tangible benefits using financial measures and observed that the company could make a cost savings of about $6.6m if process two was implemented. For the intangible benefit, the company could save about 180,000 hours for implementing process two, plus more customer satisfaction using questionnaires. (B) POPIT Model - A model used during the design phase for business process change People - The people involved in the process if they have the requires skills and competence to carry out the process and they should be involved in the design stage. Organisation - Organisational support from management. Well management will support it based on the tangible and intangible benefits already stated in the business case documents I.T - I.T infrastructure that will drive the process change and process two is largely dependent on IT. Q1. - I did not finish. Wasted so much time on PESTLE analysis before realising it was just 7 marks and Porter 5 Competitive force was 13 marks plus Suitability and Acceptability requirement for the acquisition of Flicks and assessing the Financial Directors objection towards acquiring Flicks. I am a bit sad and hoping to scale through because P3 seems to be tough paper. My first time, though.

This is very tricky that things like PESTEL or 5 forces have less marks than suitability and acceptability... as I normally can write more on 7 or 5 things than on 2 :)

Q4 was really easy question - the task is to compare two process current one and proposed one and quantify benefits where possible. So, intangible benefits were improvements on consumers time wasting for answer and explaining issue, overal proccess length more than week. Tangible - all economy on post services, salaries, travelling costs due to automatization of processes.

@hksophal said: This is my first attempt. The topics are doable, but the issue is time management: read, write, re-read to find answers.

It's now available to read and write from the very begining of exam, what do u think about new rules?

Does anyone of you have any good techniques on time management apart from not spending more time on the question than 1.8min/mark, etc? How do you practise getting faster and faster and how do you prevent yourself from writing lengthy answers, etc? Any advise would be much appreciated.

lol @drey7000: Also, did we really have to know about Man Lal, the owner of Ling company, silly things like he did his university degree in the country where he wanted to acquire the other company: Flick? Like seriously, who gives a T....? Full of silly, unnecessary rubbish information to make the case study longer, to make us run out of time, to make us spend ages looking for the information we actually do need to use for our answers. Surely nobody will write about Man Lal's university degree having been obtained in a foreign country when it had nothing to do with PESTEL or Porter's 5forces. Ridiculous. Also I noticed the exam pass rates for all ACCA professional exams are below 50% nearly all the time. Most students put in a lot of effort into studying for these exams and I think they intentionally make time management difficult so that less students pass even if they study hard because the more people fail, the more times they have to sit exams, the more money they make.

the theme for this paper ..for this september exam is to manage your time strategically ..well..as you all said , there were a lot of craps which is stupidly useless..like Man Lal's degree, and his air passenger experience crap luckily i managed to finish all questions, left me 10 minutes to do checking ..well its time for me to move on..taking p6 in my country version for those who might ask how did i complete in time..the secret is your writing speed and thinking all the same time ..plan your answer before write, otherwise u will end up multi task while writing and churning out answer from your brain , which slows you down badly

You still have a total of 3hours and 15mins to do the exam , same like before, I don't think it's a big help or any different to be fair. You still need more time to understand the scenarios (3 of them in the whole exam) and analyse the financial data, etc.

About Q4 except the calculations of all the savings I wrote about faster process, higher customer satisfaction due to lowering waiting time, lowering the levels of departments to three, minimization of manual work with IS systems. Due to time management problems I was short of time I write everything what comes to my mind. I did Q3 at last. Actually, I wrote about time that it is not in a hurry so incremental because the Webfilms is prifitable but lost first mover advantage. About power I wrote that the firm is professional burocracy and the creators have the real power. What do you think? Am my thoughts right?

From all the comments that I read it looks like time management was an issue for most students. Like everybody else I find Q1 (a 3 page question) is excessive. And by the time you read the first 2 pages, you are given a financial position and profit and loss to analyse, think and understand the company (Frick) and the industry as a whole. I find this too much to read, before even attempting to write your answers and having to flip through the 3 page question.... So effectively I agree entirely with the fact that all questions/scenarios contained a lot of information to read and digest. Another issue that I find is that you have 3 choice questions and you need to choose 2 of them. Surely you would need to read them all of them before you decide which of the 3 you will be attempting - so this means you need more time, since once you decide to drop one one them you will realise that 5/10 minutes would be wasted (or to put it more politely you are not going to utilise what you just read!!). And these 5/10 minutes could make the difference between a pass and fail mark. They could easily have gone in more handy to use on Q1..... In summary, I feel that questions should be made shorter and straight to the point, and cutting any unnecessary detail (I am sure the examiners disagree because they tell you all the information is there to be used). But is it all really necessary?

Paper was easy no doubt about that. I persume the passing ratio would be higher in this sitting. But ofcourse once the paper is of this sort 'easy' its always the time mangement issue. Overall paper was fine. Hope this time i pass :/

@ds3ce said: lol @drey7000: Also, did we really have to know about Man Lal, the owner of Ling company, silly things like he did his university degree in the country where he wanted to acquire the other company: Flick? Like seriously, who gives a T....? Full of silly, unnecessary rubbish information to make the case study longer, to make us run out of time, to make us spend ages looking for the information we actually do need to use for our answers. Surely nobody will write about Man Lal's university degree having been obtained in a foreign country when it had nothing to do with PESTEL or Porter's 5forces. Ridiculous. Also I noticed the exam pass rates for all ACCA professional exams are below 50% nearly all the time. Most students put in a lot of effort into studying for these exams and I think they intentionally make time management difficult so that less students pass even if they study hard because the more people fail, the more times they have to sit exams, the more money they make.

I would not say rubbish considring the fact if u spend time somewhere you get to know that place. Culture , demography among other things. So yes this rubbish could be utillized in exam as Lal like to grow organic rather than aqusitions, which provieds lot of social aspects.

The scenarios were way too long. I ended up rushing through all the questions and even forgot to indicate the questions I had attempted on the answer sheet?

It was my first sitting for P3 and found this session is very fair. Even it was relativately straightforward , I feel I did not pass it. I missed porter 5 forces with the Porter diamonds, so no 18 mark for Q 1. I do not think I will be able to get 50 out of 82 which is a totally unrealistic approach. I am wondering if I can get any marks : In Q 1 somewhere but not in section b ) where the examiner requested to use Porter 5 forces I mentioned powerful suppliers as difficulties to enter into new market .

Thinking to pay again due to ling's.....long question and just 7 marks for PESTEL...

this is a very fair paper?challenging but difficult to finish all the question?hope i can pass it ?god bless me

The question is just so long to read. Even with good exam technique one still needs to read the question. It was designed not to be able to answer. That is why I am saying it was a hard exam

I think the paper was fair but i failed to keep up with time ,s othe last question was answered in a general way due to time management

On Q1, I spent a lot time on PESTEL only to realise it carried 7 marks.I really blame myself for not checking on mark allocation at first.Otherwise q1 was fair but too long full of unnecessary data.

Can someone tell me if ACCA gives marks about explation of what is suitability and acceptability?

@sankenga said: On Q1, I spent a lot time on PESTEL only to realise it carried 7 marks.I really blame myself for not checking on mark allocation at first.Otherwise q1 was fair but too long full of unnecessary data.

I was the exact same on the PESTEL analysis. Mentioned something for each one. Political - Government changes to get public to buy new products. Environmental - New movement towards green products - Good for LED business proposed as they are deemed to be more green than lights currently on the market Social - Talked about how socially people are more prone to green products (highlighted in scenario). Again good potential for new LED lights Technology - Mentioned those new day saving lights they talked about in the magazine in the scenario - Ling needs to keep track of this new technology to maintain competitive advantage Economic - Place is in a recession - Mentioned they may not have enough residual income to move to LED lights as they are more expensive. Could impact revenues. Legal - Candescent lights being banned. 60% of current market is for these lights so real potential again for Ling to increase revenue and profits

hi guys this will be mine next paper to attempt and i like the discussion

The paper was fair ,the problem was time. i left 16 m in q3 and 9 marks in q2. i am praying for a pass.

I never felt so frustrated about an exam. I can say I knew 100% of the theory tested on Q1, Q3 and Q4, all the models, everything. Here is my timeline: 12:00 Start of exam 12:40 finished the reading of question 1 - went in panic, as it took so long... 13:20 finished the plan for Q1 and PESTEL requirement (7 points). And I went into panic again - half of the exam was over and I wrote for 7 marks only... The rest of the exam was very tense, everything was in rush, I didn't think of professional language and in-depth, just wanted to write as much as possible. In the revision kit 1 point is given to 3 very long sentences and I could not reach that at all. I really don't know how one will be able to pass this exam, unless a native speaker and a fast-reading prize winner... I think to give up, really...

I think this attempt was too easy as whole previous attempted due to all questions have been asked by model so no general discussion questioning tested as previous attempted normally asked . First question scenario was to difficult and long so I spent far too much time approx 70% time out total on here . 2nd question quite easy but i gave answer as generally due to time . 3rd question i just tested (b)part of answer . Hopeful of scraping a pass due to question 1 InshAllah