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My skills, style and shared values answer was pretty much the same as yours, I cant remember what I put for the staff bit.
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.
I think it was 8 marks for completing the report and a brief comment on the inventory management system. Then 15 for evaluating the performance report itself. 17 for the BSC proposal and 6 for how the BSC could affect employee behaviour. Plus 4 professional marks
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!!
Hi everybody! I took SBL yesterday, hope it will turn out well. If anybody is planning to take SBL in coming semesters, I am eager to send you the electronic version of SBL textbook and revision kit, Kaplan, in return I’d like to receive APM textbook and revision kit. If anybody is willing, please let me know. Thanks.
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 think it only said two extra new measures for the two perspectives mentioned in the BSC
I had this issue too!. You just wear the mask over you mouth put it below your nose whilst at the desk doing the exam for future! They can’t make you put it up, as it’s a funcional issue, glasses steam ergo can’t see.
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 doI said a snapshot of the FS to gauge profitability re the Government, so they can see if they are making money to transfer back to support the other university.
Keep an eye on staff morale through staff surveys for the union, to stop them getting involved and become high powered.
Monitor pass rates to appease the pressure group.
In Section A for the BSC question did you reccomend KPIs for all perspectives or just evaluate the ones provided and suggest additional ones ? i got confused the way i read the question , i undestood that we should just focus on those 2 perspectives
I looked more at what were the key issues for the groups. So for the government I said gearing (probably not the best measure to use but I panicked with 10 minutes left) so they could see if the JV would be in any financial difficulties. For the trade union it said they would only get involved if staff had to work overseas so I said something about % of local staff employed by the JV uni. And for the pressure group they seemed to be mainly concerned with standards slipping at the current uni so I said something about % of deadlines met by teachers in regards to marking exams and classwork.
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