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@aniavoo said:
Anyone attempted Q4? I can see a lot of dislike for swim lane charts here, but I think the question was actually quite easy! Tangible benefits were just a couple of calculations that were easy and you can always figure something out with intangible benefits..any thoughts?
Q1 – very lenghty and time management was a massive issue for me. I also picked Q4, mentioned similar things as @david1988 – just confused around benefit realisation review when Iron Way said it’s not their problem – benefit realisation review should be done by who initiated the project – so the council – am I right in saying that? or at least agreed beforehand whose reponsibility is that?
Overall, happy with the paper, but could have done much better if i managed my time differently..What did you put for part d of Q1? The strategic alliance part. I talked around knowledge of markets and dealing with fierce competition, decent market share currently, sharing skills and resources. 3 positives there. Negatives were loss of competitive edge if need to share LED technology, loss of reputation if Flicks wasn’t great – not enough info in the scenario to state either way – further research required. Also talked about creating future potential competition as you are sharing all your ideas.
Did 3 & 4
and because question 1 is so long took too much time to read and too much time to answer the question. I consider myself is a fast reader and typer, although it took 2 hours to answer the first one .. 3 took 45 mins. 4 I still could not remember what I wrote on the paper …ACCA suppose to consider using a computer-based exams, if the questions are that long. Otherwise, they could increase the time of the test.
If you have such cases in real life. It would take at lease two days to study them carefully and reply on them. Replying on such cases on 3 hours and filling out more than 10 pages is nearly impossible using your hand.
@david1988 said:
What did you put for part d of Q1? The strategic alliance part. I talked around knowledge of markets and dealing with fierce competition, decent market share currently, sharing skills and resources. 3 positives there. Negatives were loss of competitive edge if need to share LED technology, loss of reputation if Flicks wasn’t great – not enough info in the scenario to state either way – further research required. Also talked about creating future potential competition as you are sharing all your ideas.I believe that was the time when I looked at the clock and the only thing that came to my mind was “oh f**k” so I mentioned very little, mainly disadvantage of having to share profits and since investors are hungry for growth and dividends, that may not work…so your answer looks much more promising!
Hi guys,
Just out of curosity as i think i made a mistake – do you have to show your calcs for financial ratios? I feel like i should have but i didnt…
D:
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Definitely too time pressured exam!
@juve113 said:
Hi guys,Just out of curosity as i think i made a mistake – do you have to show your calcs for financial ratios? I feel like i should have but i didnt…
D:
I never showed my calculations either. If the figure is correct shouldn’t be an issue. Not like we had lots of spare time to be showing all our workings. Time pressure was unreal.
Ridiculous paper. Time pressured and so boring. The exam and the subject has such great potential to be interesting, yet somehow the examiner utterly ruins it with the style of the questions.
In question 1, did we really need to know about the owner settling into his seat as the plane flew over the mountains? What utter rubbish, it’s like the examiner started writing a bad a novel and halfway through realised its supposed to be an exam paper.
Really unimpressed with this paper and this subject. I do not feel I did well, and I don’t think it should be this difficult, as in reality it adds very little real world value to an accountant. It’s not like business people think “oh, a stakeholder, I should consult mendelows matrix to ensure I am effectively dealing with them”. What a joke, these things are common sense which an accountant is supposed to have, we shouldn’t need to learn stupid models and matrixes for them.
When you resit P1 and take P3 you feel like a tractor run over your head and neck.
Plus I am an accountant so I need to work quite hard due to monthly reporting (frist two weeks)… I was exhausted this session 🙁
Any way I did Q4 I liked it. But as it was last exam question I could not focus on requitements of last part. Ithink B was about ignoring cost saving… and I wrote about that :/
@drey7000 said:
In question 1, did we really need to know about the owner settling into his seat as the plane flew over the mountains? What utter rubbish, it’s like the examiner started writing a bad a novel and halfway through realised its supposed to be an exam paper.
that made me ROFL! But I think you are right, since we are not supposed to write unrelevant things in our scripts, the examiner shoudn’t either.
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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.This is my first attempt. The topics are doable, but the issue is time management: read, write, re-read to find answers.
@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
Found the paper far too time pressured! Definitely wasn’t the worse paper (based on the requirements) but the sheer volume of info provided (particularly in Q1) was a major cause for concern! 2 full pages of narrative and another full page of financial information. I think most students would agree that there was so much pointless information in the narrative about the owner (the details of his flight? Nobody cares)! 7m for PESTEL, 13 m for 5 forces, 18m for Suitability & Acceptability of acquisition, 8m for strategic alliance and the standard 4 professional marks.
I opted for Q2 and Q3 like most people – again requirements weren’t the worse but both had reasonably long narratives as well and I’m sure most would agree that these perhaps could have been a little shorter considering the ridiculous length of Q1.
Q2 wasn’t the worse for those who have a reasonable understanding of Project Management. Part a for 16m was an assessment of the project and the risks associated for the council and the Tram company. 9m in part b for analysis of 3 stakeholders – this and the PESTEL were probably the easiest marks available on the paper (IMO).
Q3 was both good and bad for me. 16m in part a for analysis of 5 internal contextual features – had this covered well and would be confident of 12-14 marks. Part b for 9m was much worse. I didn’t study boundary organizations and will probably pay a heavy price for this. Time pressure was intense at this stage and I answered this with reference to Harmon’s process strategy – didn’t spend too much time on this and will very likely score a zero for this section.
Did anybody reference Harmon for part b in their answers?
All in all, a passable paper at a glance but time management was crucial. I Fell into the examiners ‘time traps’ and I’m sure there are many others would will feel the same.
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 :/
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.
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