APMACCA Paper APM September 2020 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments

Some students had EVA in the first questions, other did not. Do not do as I did and worry as soon as somebody mentions EVA. Different people had different Q1s. Relax!

For RI I used operating profit after tax instead of operating profit...and opening capital employed And just used the WACC...not sure though if should shop have been operating profits.

I made some silly mistakes on ROCE and RI too, was so annoyed at myself when I realised that after!

I agree I thought you had to evaluate the report too. The scenario said they didn’t want you to suggest any performance indicators at this stage, so this would have been required in part iii) the BSC question. The impression I got from the scenario was that it was dominated with financial measures and a lack of non financial. So I wrote about the benefits of having a mix of indicators. Did you have something similar?

For Mc Kinsey model, I just talked about different in strategy...one is a differentiator in niche market with emphasis on non financial measure and non accounting style...and other seems to be focusing on volumes and sales...so difference in shared values. Then talked about staff morale For Skills Mentioned about the quality and technical knowledge

There was definitely different Q1s. The question for Q1 specifically said do not give an additional KPIs nor its lack of non-financial indicators and just to evaluate if it’s ‘fit for purpose’. I had around $432,000 on EVA but imagine calculation was simple and most marks on the evaluation. I struggled on E-commerce characteristics, is this learnt knowledge from foundation paper?

I pretty much said: Skills: In relation to the specialised inventory they've learnt to stock but the new owners want them to keep the same type of inventory in all shops. Style: One company seems to be a differentiator working in a niche market where as the other is mainly interested in growth and market share. Shared Values: Shared Values developed within the company of spending time talking to customers about their specific needs where as staff from the new company just want to push sales. Staff: (all I could remember about this was it was about the number of staff?) The new owners had put one of their staff in each store. These individuals could be treated like outsiders by the other staff and would be outnumbered.

Oh my God. I almost passed out! I’m thinking there was no BSC in my APM exam! Q1 Perf Report, EVA, E-Commerce System Q2 Joint Venture, Mendelows Stakeholders Q3 McKinsey 7Ss, ERPS I think CBE exam questions are different from paper based. Did you do CBE or paper based?

the paper was fair,thank you open tuition team for your wonderful material.

What did u talk in q3 jv. I talked about different environement operating. One has secured funds so objective is to expand number of ventures and probably would want to take more risk...the other is focused on quality of education. Different attitudes and different management style resulting in conflicts. Disagreements about the efforts put.. Different measures of performance And low of key staff so difficult to manage performance

I had EVA in the UK. Did CBE

I did CBE today and questions were as follows; Section A; - limitations of the use of solely financial performance indicators (6 marks) - An evaluation of the current financial report (17 marks) - EVA (including calculation) and it’s usefulness as a performance measure (14 marks) - characteristics of new e-commerce system (9 marks) + 4 professional marks. Section B; McKinsey 7s model ERPS System Section C; Mendelow’s matrix Joint ventures I spent too much time on Section A, so unfortunately a resit for me! For Section B, did anyone find the narrative was just too short to be able to put stuff into the Soft S model? Section C - had to re-read the text over and over again because I just couldn’t understand what was happening with all the stakeholders involved! Did anyone else find this unclear?! *sigh*

yes, i struggled with it to. was rereading and time was wasting... couldn't link it.....

Hey for the ERPS question what did you guys put I need help please

Does anyone remember the mark allocation for Q1 of variant without EVA?

My skills, style and shared values answer was pretty much the same as yours, I cant remember what I put for the staff bit.

@amstax I had the exact same set of questions. I overran on time for Section A too, and only had about 20 mins or so for the last question. That last question felt like the hardest of the three, I couldn't fully wrap my head around it with the limited time and the scenario felt the most complexed. Did you manage to put any performance measures for the three stakeholders? The 7S question I put various points about the staff disharmony, and how the two companies needed to align the differences in their goals (quality vs focus on VFM) but I may have repeated some points for each of the soft skills.

I just found the whole paper very strange to be honest and I’m deeply disappointed that I ran out of time. I’ve spent so long preparing for this exam and it’s looking like a resit. I too was running out of time during the last question, so I was trying to get down as much as I could but I just couldn’t understand what was happening with all the stakeholders involved, it really was very confusing! So no marks for that part of the question unfortunately. The 7s model I mentioned various points with majority of talking points around staff whereby various managers had left due to the venture and that the new business was more focused on pursuing market share vs the original company who were more driven by quality of service (financial vs non-financial). I made some reference to skills too, in that the new staff were lacking technical experience and that they didn’t really interact with the customers. Tbh I just wrote a lot of waffle, so hope I can scrap some marks for common sense!

I felt the exact same honestly. I got to question 3 with 30 minutes left, spent 20 minutes on part a and then had to rush through part b with 10 minutes left. Tried to really structure my Section A answers to get the professional marks but honestly spent too long on it as a result so for the Section B questions I just started typing whatever came into my mind at the time. I also feel as though I wrote a lot of waffle and I repeated myself a lot. I didn't like the exam much, in previous exams it always seemed as though you got some very easy questions with easy marks, like do a mendelow matrix review or a PESTLE review but in this exam even the mendelow question was more complex than usual. Honestly expecting to be doing a resit in December but I've had that feeling after every exam other than when I failed P1 the first time and passed them all. It might be a case of just resiting until an exam comes up with a good mix of things I'm strong at.

it asked for evaluation so i wrote the good and bad parts of erps can affect the business overall. wrote about how erps is not centrally managed therefore cud lead to misuse and duplication of information. but overall erps is an advantage to keep up with the competitors and how it wud now allow the slonyard(cant remember the name lol) company to overcome its existing problems relating to outdated systems. and gave a final conclusion. 3rd question was tricky but had time as i properly managed time this attempt. the whole paper was quite easy compared to my prevoius sitting. sat for it 2 times. 3rd time is a charm, will pass this time hopefully

I related it to the issues that were outlined, something about not being able to track inventory in time, not receiving performance data on time and not logging orders correctly. For the downsides I mentioned the cost of the system and cost of training the staff to use the system in terms of money and time.

This was a fair paper despite the time constraints but this is expected in every exam from PM onwards. Very pleased with my performance after a bit of a nightmare sitting SBL yesterday after being forced to wear a mask and hence my glasses steaming up which easily lost me 30 minutes so not expecting a pass. However this sitting at APM i purchased a new mask to cope with my intense breathing habits during an ACCA examination an bravo i managed to finish the paper even after amending my grammar, spelling and punctuation. I finished 98% of the paper so really hoping for a pass. Good luck to everyone its been a difficult 6 months studying!!

Totally agree. I had a quick glance through all the questions at the beginning and I saw McKinsey 7s, ERPS and Mendelow’s - I was relived because normally they are pretty straight forward. Then when I finally got to the questions, it was the company profile that really let the questions down, especially the last one which was On section A, I just spent far too much time on each requirement, particularly on the performance report - I was really struggling to pick up 17 marks worth! APM is a total lottery, it’s so hard to plan for this exam but I totally agree that this paper was more complicated than previous papers. Not looking forward to resitting but heyho.

I didn’t do any calculations for this as I thought it was evaluating only and didn’t need them. I find this exam so confusing. Q1

I had Eva too in the 1:30 exam

I did this too. I’m sure it said not to give examples of new measures

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I think it only said two extra new measures for the two perspectives mentioned in the BSC

I took the operating profit less imputed interest (capital employed total assets - current liabilities x wacc) I just did what the formula said I should do

How about punctuation? Will that count in terms of marks