*** ACCA Paper SBL December 2019 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

havent failed an acca exam up to this point but i failed this one,
too much worrying about structure,gaining professoonal marks which led to a lot of incoherent rambling and bad time management, basically no experience of how much to communicate to a project manager which led to confusion how to apply the culture web,leadership theory and whatever else, couple of other questions followed the same pattern, reading people comments only question i feel good about ia bcg matrix and i used porters 5 forces to compliment the pestel one

@Lavinia69 said:
No comfort to anyone, but I did the same.

I did answer all parts of the question as I allowed 40 minutes for reading/answer planning and then 2 minutes per mark for answering. Once my time was up I moved on leaving blank paper so I could come back to them at the end.

Not saying I think I have passed though. It was a tricky exam. More BCS than models?

I believe we are allowed to further develop past comments if they are relevant. Besides it would be rather impossible to NOT have to refer to governments plans for green cars given the fact its mentioned through out the Question Paper

My 3rd attempt today
I answered the questions only model I used was BCG
Feeling a wee bit more positive but definitely didn’t say enough
I’m always afraid of waffling so I hold back
And in my head I know it but u always forget to write it
I never said anything about time and scope of change I just mentioned it might be difficult as people so used to diesel and petrol cars… scored very little but hopefully I’ve done enough

Q1 For the BCG I put the cord vacuum as the cash cow, cordless as the star and robotic as the question mark – I spent way too long deciding which one was which

Q2 I mainly focused on the fact that the cars were to be customised I.e. built to order to customer requirements, so they would have to work closely with less suppliers to get parts on time. Focused on lead times, integration and better information linking all parts of the supply chain. I found it hard to come up with points on this

Q3 For the drivers for early adopting, I focused on government subsidies and charging points. Also talked about costs and teaching consumers of the benefits

Q3 Anyone know if we just had to talk about the benefits of both countries? I used the point that JJ wanted the plant near future markets and supplies. One of the countries showed growth in car sales, access to supplies ie steal and low cost wage base to manufacture in. Other country had a higher cost base but better government incentives

Q3 Benefits of using the battery for existing and new products – disrupt other industries, core competencies, economies of scale, tried and tested, quicker time to market

Q4 I had no idea, I basically wrote about autonomy, team spirit, first to market, innovation, etc. I thought the question was worded difficult with nothing specific about project management actually in the case more just general management

I didnt write the same for 1-a.
I choosed cable vacuum the dog (declining)
cordless vacuum as a cash cow (medium growth)
robotic one as a star (high growth)

I emphasized Porter ‘s three competitive strategies as 1 – b also had a competitive strategy theme. I wrote about be cheapper, be better, be nisher.

2-a I couldnt write anything.
2-b was easy presantion slide about strenghts of new battery technology

3 rd question was about comparing two countries. I used Porter’s Diamond in this question.

4 th I explained the current leadership in the company. I made an assessment in the context of “cultural web” since it expresses the cultural structure with the effect or similar expression in the cultural structure of the company.

I wish all of you the best.

I will add my responses, should it provide any relief, though I mirror the uncertainty felt by everyone else.

1a – I completely forgot the terms of the matrix e.g star etc. However I answered not to invest in the corded declining market, they should invest in the cordless as they have a strong market share. Large sales and the market is still growing. I advised against further investment in the robotic due to the initial high sales price which has attracted a lot of competition and will ultimately lead to lower long term margins.

1b – if this was the question about the restructuring or refocus. I was stuck for theory so I just suggested that the marketing would need to change and be prioritised as this is a much higher value purchase and a brochure will not suffice etc. I also said they could tap into their existing customer base and offer them promotional offers on the new vehicle given their loyalty to the brand with previous purchases.

2a – external factors to speed – government and local council resistance to large coverage of charge points. Ppl will not want to buy if planning permission is hard to obtain if they wanted to build their own charge point near home, or if there are not enough across country. Won’t buy car if not large coverage of charging facilities.

2b unanswered.

3 – used porters diamond and found this question OK.

4. Email was a joke. No theory applied. I just emphasised the project managers point of first to market being critical, therefore confidentiality needed to be maintained. And that we as an intraprenurial company encourage ideas from anyone who believes the process to market can be made quicker. We have a strong brand and demand, just need to get it done first.

The most shocking part of all, was the guy sat a few tables in front of me who put his pen down at 12.30 and genuinely didn’t pick it up again. Wish I had that confidence (or glad I didn’t)

This was my second attempt. I did find that there was a lot more information to work with compared to the sept exam. However, trying to understand exactly what the examiner wants you to do is the trickiest thing about SBL. I don’t believe any of the previous specimen or exams can ever fully prepare you for these each exam sitting. It is a lottery. Other than BCG no other theory was really tested. I’m hoping I have applied myself better in this exam compared to September, but god only knows!! I really think that there is one to many questions in this exam. There never seems adequate time for Q4.

1A
BCG matrix assessment of the 3 products however I thought there was other relevant points when it came to making recommendation such as:
JJ tech need a new star to subsidise electric car project as cordless will move down to cash cow and corded discontinued.
Where they were in their product life cycles.
The robotic side – maybe they didn’t have leading market share because their mapping etc wasn’t as well developed as their battery so investment was needed in these areas.
Also the company strategy for vacuums was differentiation charging high prices however market was getting new entrants driving down prices. Will it generate enough margin for subsidising projects if prices keep getting driven down.

1b
Was stumped at first but In the end just thought it made sense to go through each value chain component and talk about how it would need to be adjusted for cars. For example inbound logistics – is 300 suppliers realistic when you’re building customised cars upon them being ordered rather than in bulk, inventory was already a delicate balance. Then would say how this may affect their competence like quality production or drive up price of electric car.

2a
Wasn’t too sure but just made a logical guess from what was in the exhibit.
Government policy looked like an obvious driver for change. Speed up by lobbying if that didn’t work aggressive marketing to appeal to non green customers.
Wasn’t sure about the other so I said infrastructure (charge points as example).
To speed up could try integrate by creating innovative charging points and either secure government funding or bills them though own funds and sell the electricity to fund project.

2b
Disruptive tech just listed some benefits of the battery and what they meant for design team like scope of the battery meant they had the opportunity to create new appliances using the battery.

3
Comparing the two countries I structured the report using the four parts of porters diamond. Picked out the information from pestel to fit in to the components of posters diamond. Took an objective approach and didn’t make recommendation as it asked you not to.

Question 4 was weird talking about those things in an email to other colleagues. Just went through the interview and other exhibits and pulled out leadership and cultural quotes. Then made recommendations on things we would do in the project to reiterate this behaviour and achieve success. Probably wasn’t what they wanted but might score some marks.

2a
Wasn’t too sure but just made a logical guess from what was in the exhibit.
Government policy looked like an obvious driver for change. Speed up by lobbying if that didn’t work aggressive marketing to appeal to non green customers.
Wasn’t sure about the other so I said infrastructure (charge points as example).
To speed up could try integrate by creating innovative charging points and either secure government funding or sell the electricity to fund project.

Disruptive tech just listed some benefits of the battery and what they meant for design team like scope of the battery meant they had the opportunity to create new appliances using the battery.

Comparing the two countries I structured the report using the four parts of porters diamond. Picked out the information from pestel to fit in to the components of posters diamond.

Question 4 was weird talking about those things in an email to other colleagues. Just went through the interview and other exhibits and pulled out leadership and cultural quotes and made recommendations on things we would do in the project to reiterate this behaviour and achieve success. Probably wasn’t what they wanted but might score some marks.

Reassuring to see that other people shared my concerns.
As a query did anyone head their answers up with a name, to/from and a title” like the following?

“Report

To: JJ
Date: XX/XX/XX
Prepared by: External consultant
Report on XYZ”

Q1a)
I did corded Cash Cow (Declining growth; Highest market share),
Cordless as Star with a note about the level of growth potentially making it shift towards Cash Cow (Medium growth; Highest market share)
and, robotics as problem child (High growth; mid-level market share)

Along with a recommendation of what should be done, although this was essentially just textbook but modified for the setting. So the cash cow, should in theory have less of a threat of new competition and with less vying for market share the margin could be exploited to fund other products rather than being plowed back.

The star, I wrote about how they need to defend their market lead and how margins are likely to be low and thus, unable to fund other projects with it.
And the problem child, that they essentially needed to go on the attack and promote their product to try and gain market share. Was a snippet of information about how it was best in the market at XYZ, so I wrote about that. (Could have been the quietest or something?)

Q1b)
Initially thought this question would be rather simple as what I’ve seen of practise questions and the like the value chain generally has a few differences companies employing a cost-saving element while persuing a differentiating strategy.

I thought from reading things that both the current vacuum & the future car strategy would both be differentiation. Initially thought it was rather difficult as almost everything to my eye at least seemed to already be differentiation. As such, I just focused on the differences in this specific car market. So the vacuums use cutting edge tech, I suggested some hand-finished works for the car.

They train people up internally for staff, I suggested that skilled people could be taken on as they attempting to be first to market with the car and this would reduce the setback. Various other points as well, the guarantee for the vacuums were 5 years, I didn’t consider this especially long for a battery of a 60k car where 35% of the cost was the battery, so I suggested an increase, seeing as it stated that the customers wanted that.

Professional marks were awarded for scepticism, and I felt rather sceptical of a lot of things on this list or rather the lack of. I wrote about how some sections had multiple bullet points whilst others had only one or two and wondered if this was because they were only cherry-picking the best elements for the report.

Was also quite sceptical of some of the points they made when they simply wrote a statement as the way they generated value with no further explanation. So for example, they used high tech to generate value in production which is quite logical, but in another section, they wrote that they communicated R&D and production between each other well, with no further explanation of how they did this.

tl;dr sceptical of everything being so rosy.

Q2a) Two external forces for change.
I did the environmental concern for carbon emissions & outlets being a potential limiting factor.

Q2b) The slide presentation. Thought this was a pretty difficult one, didn’t really know what they wanted for a “perfect slide”.

I did bullet points for the slide as I didn’t think they would expect witty quotes from James Dyson to be recalled of the top of your head, nor did I see enough data provided to do a graph. So just did bullet points, short and snappy with notes that expanded upon them. Also made a note for JJ to read about sharing his enthusiasm with the group–had seen on a past exam paper that marks were awarded for encouraging the junior member of your team when doing a report and thought this would be of a similar nature(?)

3) I went to town on this, feel it was my strongest question. Was all about which country was better wrote about basically everything in the pestel, along with alot about the other sections. I personally made a recommendation, of the developing country. As I felt the growing pressure for environmental change, rising wages, rising cars per head, the large volume of steel, and the lack of real competition swayed it.

That being said I had a lot going for the developed country as well such as the subsidies, higher min wage etc. Don’t know if anyone else commented on it but I wrote a bit about the wages as a benefit to the developed country, given how skilled the labour required on these cars seemed to be I didn’t think we would be seeking to recruit people for peanuts, but rather that the wages although minimum rather than medium instead reflected how affordable the product was. Not that I expect someone on a min wage of $6 an hour to buy a $60k car.

Q4) Thought and still feel that this was the hardest question, really felt that it was very wishy-washy and struggled to pin down exactly what to do. I wrote about the leadership, culture, and organisational achievements as requested, but putting into an email format I felt like I was simply reiterating information from the case studies and disseminating it to the team with the findings that they should come forward if they have ideas. Struggled to see what else could be rewritten. But I guess marks would be awarded for the dissemination of this information as the members of the team wouldn’t necessarily have the information themselves.

Stuff like “As you may know we promote a culture of not criticising people if their ideas might seem unsuitable. So come forward with your ideas.” type of thing. I felt like basically all of the information provided served to reinforce the fact that JJ and the rest of the gang wanted people to come forward with every suggestion no matter how stupid it might sound to others.

Wrote a bit about the incorporation of the solar tech as well, and how the company said they were constant re-engineering the products in the value chain, so if you had an idea don’t think its to late to include it.

@beatab said:
For Q2b I didint really write anyhing, was supposed to come back to it but run out of time. Q4 was quite weird, I just wrote about how communication, suggesting new ideas etc is important for the company- all in ‘lifting spitits’ tone… I used BCG and SAF in 1a, in Q3 i used Porter’s Diamond. In value chain and Q4 I didnt really use any theory and the same in 2b- benefits. And I feel that was not good I could not apply any theory to more than half of the exam…

me too.. same answer.. I used saf and bcg , and value chain taken data from portal chain, in question 2 i think i used current vaccum market and recommended additional activities they need to provide.. could not understand much the last question, But i tried to answer it..it was lengthy, but i was stucked with 3 and 4 quite some time, in number 3 they didnt want any recommendation so i was struggling .. so far confusing, did not use much theory which actually confused me a lot

@sabrina006 said:
me too.. same answer.. I used saf and bcg , and value chain taken data from portal chain, in question 2 i think i used current vaccum market and recommended additional activities they need to provide.. could not understand much the last question, But i tried to answer it..it was lengthy, but i was stucked with 3 and 4 quite some time, in number 3 they didnt want any recommendation so i was struggling .. so far confusing, did not use much theory which actually confused me a lot

there was another ACCA paper exam too.