*** ACCA Paper APM September 2018 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

Q1C Management Styles

It was a brief overview of all 3 and then pin point which style the company was currently, all the talk of BSC etc was only talk at this stage, the company had a strong accounting backbone and all KPI’s were financial based at present and short term in focus, therefore I felt it was firmly in the Budget Constrained Style currently but would / should be moving to a Profit Conscious Style on adoption of BSC.

Q1: I talked about the use of ROCE being something budget constrained style management would use, and that the recent good performance suggested it isnt a bad style for this business.

I then suggested where profit conscious measures focussing on value would help supplement this and would be a good appraoch to expansion in new geographies- treating each new country as a “project” and working out an NPV based on risks known to that country as a disc factor. Also mentioned that EVA would align with wanting to get cash for dividends better than ROCE.

Q2: If you look at Culam from Dec 14 and specimen paper I basically adapted this answer to fit the circumstances (ie model is backwards looking, has all companies on stock exch which have sectoral diffs, the long nature of oil projects Freeze and Thor deliver means there will be lifecycle cost implications not consideres when you take a snapshot at a point in time). I messed up the gearing bit to start but quickly got back into it – just hope my poor presentation at the start of this doesnt detract from the points I made about fixed vs variable costs and risk, then on financial gearing the serviceability of diff types of debt and risk profile being different etc.

Q3: I talked about the possible outsourcing savings being lost if the BPR project wasnt implemented successfully- did some calcs to show cost per unit if you only had 8000 goods in the container vs 10000. I also talked about the challenges of implementing but related everything back to the question as best as I could in this regard.

I think any answers suitably justified are worthy of merit based on what tutors tell us so fingers crossed!

Did anyone put a reward based management style should be followed based on vroome? I didn’t pick up it had to be one of those 3. may have fluffed up.

Consider data piling and the relevance and reliability of data etc. Time consuming to mine through it, subjective etc.

Everyone relax hopefully we all do well

I don’t know ???? what this examiner wants .

Did you all answer 100% of the paper?

10 %

It was my first attempt and I don’t feel happy with my attempt. Throughout the exam I felt I was in a hurry and so I coudn’t think properly how to structure concise but relevant responses. I ended up giving more general responses which is bad.

I read Q1 (d) five times as I couldn’t understand the question asked. I responded, as many, using the building block model characteristics of standards and rewards. I do consider that the examiner could do better in formulating his questions in a clearer way.

I think my paper is a 40, I hope in a 50. I am in God’s hands now.

I had a similar approach. Used building block principles and spoke in reference to the scorecard and wider objectives.

First question on KPIs was tricky as had to be linked to the current situation Fearties was faced with (i.e. global expansion and quality problems).

Thought the corporate failure question was okay and pretty straight forward. Advantages and disadvantages of the quantitative models. Gearing was interesting as Thor had high fixed costs but Freeze had the oil spill problem.

BPR question was tricky and wasn’t like the previous questions asked.

Overall, tough but fair exam. P5/APM is a funny one as you may get a completely different answer to someone else but both score highly. Fingers crossed for everyone!!

I had a similar approach. Used building block principles and spoke in reference to the scorecard and wider objectives.

First question on KPIs was tricky as had to be linked to the current situation Fearties was faced with (i.e. global expansion and quality problems). i got 4.443 or something, but yes it was in the grey area

Thought the corporate failure question was okay and pretty straight forward. Advantages and disadvantages of the quantitative models. Gearing was interesting as Thor had high fixed costs but Freeze had the oil spill problem.

BPR question was tricky and wasn’t like the previous questions asked.

Overall, tough but fair exam. P5/APM is a funny one as you may get a completely different answer to someone else but both score highly. Fingers crossed for everyone

1a) 20 marks – was appendix 1 sufficient for financial, can you correct ROCE done by junior accountant, 2 CSFS for all the other elements of the balanced scorecard
B) using customers as an example outline the problems with non financial information (8?)
C) the budget constrained, profit conscious, non accounting management style question – what do you recommend?
D) appraisal scheme

@chullbulla said:
I am the only one who didnt use building block even I was thinking and tried to use balance card.

I think I did the same as you and didn’t use the Building Block Model and instead used the Balance Scorecard model, I hope this doesn’t mean we get “0 marks” for that question ???

I didn’t mentioned a specific target, I saw this part of the question as the chapter of HR management and how appraisal, rewards needs to be in relation with KPI.

not sure if I took the right approach to answer but as in other part of the question you had to talk about performance indicators hence targets, I didn’t see we need to actually provide targets.

I wrote about about the current situation, and changes that must be done adopting the BSC, as the whole question was about that.