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

I don’t know what to say about this diet.

I couldn’t complete the paper 🙁 Wrote only for 78 marks. But the paper was actually easy

It was very issue/recommendation heavy.

..

I thought apart from ethics question which seemed too easy to be true, there was nothing extreme about paper. Did anybody else not use table for last question? I thought it would look really messy in that layout

@arm2250 said:
I thought apart from ethics question which seemed too easy to be true, there was nothing extreme about paper. Did anybody else not use table for last question? I thought it would look really messy in that layout

For ethics. Not sure it’s correct but I said it wouldn’t be in the shareholders interest if they published it, they provide material for schools etc so it needs to be actual or based on factual info and that mis-quoting the source material may lead to litigation as it doesn’t reflect good on them.

I wish I didn’t use that layout, my work looked like a complete mess. I didn’t even think to turn my paper landscape until after the exam. The column headings confused me as well for some staff issues I couldn’t think of company management issues.

I tried to use pipco for ethics question but it looked like jargon

Bit confused about this one. It felt really easy, but, 4 hours for me was not enough. I could’ve done with another 45 minutes. Hopefully I did enough to pass.

Q1) Corp Gov – Pretty easy to get 7/8 issues with board
Q2) Ethical issues with releasing book as is – Being sceptical of the ‘expert’s’ views + perceived lack of commissioning and review committees is what I wrote for 2b.
Q3) S,A,F. I did mine as Financial and Non Financial, only because that’s what the question asked. This was more a non financial cultural one as well as stating there was no where near enough financial data to assess the company’s performance.
Q4) Internal controls issues and how to handle them
4b)Website – Focus on Attract and Retain customers. CRM, 6 Is for this one
Q5) Table on how various elements of the company are viewed and actions. Can’t remember what I did here, but it was done in the remaining 4 minutes I had left. There were about 10 marks for this so I imagine it needed some notes with it.

Just typing this up makes me see how easy it was but for some reason, I just didn’t have enough time. Annoyed with is if I don’t pass.

GLA

@joseway1979 said:
Bit confused about this one. It felt really easy, but, 4 hours for me was not enough. I could’ve done with another 45 minutes. Hopefully I did enough to pass.

Q1) Corp Gov – Pretty easy to get 7/8 issues with board
Q2) Ethical issues with releasing book as is – Being sceptical of the ‘expert’s’ views + perceived lack of commissioning and review committees is what I wrote for 2b.
Q3) S,A,F. I did mine as Financial and Non Financial, only because that’s what the question asked. This was more a non financial cultural one as well as stating there was no where near enough financial data to assess the company’s performance.
Q4) Internal controls issues and how to handle them
4b)Website – Focus on Attract and Retain customers. CRM, 6 Is for this one
Q5) Table on how various elements of the company are viewed and actions. Can’t remember what I did here, but it was done in the remaining 4 minutes I had left. There were about 10 marks for this so I imagine it needed some notes with it.

Just typing this up makes me see how easy it was but for some reason, I just didn’t have enough time. Annoyed with is if I don’t pass.

GLA

I thought question 4a was on post project review. There was quite a lot of information on how bad the project was managed.

Does anyone remember if they wrote about the audit committee and nominations committee In The first question? Like the weakness is about nomination commite not doing their work and audit committee not having NEDS with relevant financial info and this leads to lack of effective overview of financials? And also did anyone right in question 2a whether the experts view regarding conclusions could be a bit exaggerated as he based it on just a reasonable reading and not more deep research into it?

Very weird exam as felt easy but equally easy to waffle.

Q1) board composition and operation critiques (age, gender, age of service, lack of strategic focus, unaware of competitors etc)

Q2) ethical commercial issues of Dr Xavier (purposefully misquoting to fit conclusion, factual error etc all resulting in commercial damage etc)

Q2b) I felt this was worded very poorly so left this until the end, as 6 marks not as concerned

Q3) financial and non financial factors of attractiveness of company – could use SAF but I didn’t as didn’t want to restrict myself, could say a wide range of issues:

– competencies of the company in digital development so good match for the current platform
– much better financials (profit margins)
– performs better in Asian market so can assist fiveoak
– redundancies cost
– clash of culture between staff
– motivation and appraisal benefits
– governance differences (the company is private and insider system so less good systems/controls) whereas five hive is listed and more requirement for stricter compliance
– good reputation of the company can strengthen five hive
Etc etc

Q4) weakness of project management and improvements:
– lack of meeting regularly
– no proper project manager
– meetings but only IT so wrong
– poor supplier choice by IT – not wide perspective
– allowance of project slippage was not properly addressed
– etc

Q4b) how to retain and attract customers On its platform:
– online community to build interactivity
– loyalty cards online?
– increase Facebook and Twitter use as currently under-utilised
– increase more filter options (as customers moaning they want more)
– tailored emails on favourite books/birthday rewards
– allow authors to submit books and have voting by community for their favourite

Q5) staff feelings, management issues and action on leadership, participation, communication and appraisal

Appraisal: standard check list, one way, only once a year

Communication: actively discouraging cross boundary talk etc

Participation: managers stealing employees ideas and taking credit making them less wanting to participate

Leadership: lack of thinking ahead of the game, being behind competitors to employees frustration

Anyone else? 🙂

I think this was a decent paper, but time management got the better of me. I was quite confident for the first half of the paper, but 4b and 5 threw me off completely. There was something about the wording of 4b which said something along the lines of “how to retain and attract customers in relation to the highlighted headings for Coming Soon”. So I wasn’t sure whether to focus on the three things that were mentioned under the ‘coming soon’ title which were student/teacher resources, mobile app, and one other I’ve forgotten.

Question 5 wasn’t difficult but they insisted on that table which meant my entire answer was messy and I didn’t get to develop points.

Models I tried to use (that I remember) were 6Is, SAF (though for the latter I ended up writing numerous different points after the ‘model’ because i thought it restricted my answer. Hope I don’t lose professional marks for that (but I probably will)