APM*** December 2022 ACCA APM exam – Instant Poll and comments ***

Same for me with EVA think it was way off but at least tried probably had one or two things in the wrong place

Do you know if we can score any mark for the Rollinng budget calculation if we forgot to add the next quarter?

Absolute disaster for me. Got stuck in the time trap of Q1 when I should have moved on. This was a resit today and I actually feel I've scored lower than the 44 I got last time.

nighteyes wrote:Absolute disaster for me. Got stuck in the time trap of Q1 when I should have moved on. This was a resit today and I actually feel I’ve scored lower than the 44 I got last time.

I was the same with Q1 had to move on thought I would have time to go back at the end but didn’t had to rush it Same here 3rd time sitting it hoping professional marks push me over 50

For me the worst questions were: - responding to employees comments about EVA - maybe it wasn’t terribly hard but I don’t really get it how it can be awarded 15 points for that. Also 2 of them were quite strange - if Eva can be caluculated for single product (how to even expand this point) and how employee can increase Eva which I find quite strange question. - how eva helps maximising shareholders wealth (I wasn’t sure how to understand this question).

Completely agree, non of this was in the text I think examiners just make up questions, never come across Eva per product - just made up Eva is for long term growth for the over all company and if they want per product then the best measure would be opening margin or gross profit margin. Just hoping my made up answer will get me something

The points about EVA per product and employee's control over EVA were, for me, quite easy to answer. The issue with that question is the proposal was absolute rubbish. So I went against the Marketing Director's wishes and completely ripped into the proposal of using EVA as a performance measure across the entire business. You can't calculate EVA per product, and employees have no control over the performance measure. Simply asking them to add value is way too vague. Also, showing the employees the calculation was a bad move, is the marketing director genuinely expecting all their employees to understand things like WACC and capital employed? EVA is a high level calculation for qualified accountants, using it as a performance measure should be reserved for board level only, and absolutely not those on the shop floor. Honestly, the proposal was terrible, proper 'my mate down the pub told me so and so' kind of nonsense.

I got questions about the following 1. Budgeting of divisions ABB and benefits Rolling budget calculation ERPS 2. Performance pyramid and it's relevance to scenario Assess the internal eff measures Why NFPI are difficult to measure 3. Benchmarking exercise BPR I completed question one and three. But couldn't complete most of the second question. So I attempted around 80-85% Did anyone else face this issue? What are the chances of passing if you don't attempt 100%

nighteyes wrote:The points about EVA per product and employee’s control over EVA were, for me, quite easy to answer. The issue with that question is the proposal was absolute rubbish. So I went against the Marketing Director’s wishes and completely ripped into the proposal of using EVA as a performance measure across the entire business.

But did the question even ask if EVA should be introduced or am I missing something?

SevenUP wrote:But did the question even ask if EVA should be introduced or am I missing something?

Nope, in fact the marketing director wanted your support for it. But even at this early stage I knew I was on a hiding to nothing with this exam, and so I simply spoke my mind, because the proposal was nonsense. Hey, I should at least score points for scepticism. ;) Edit: I should point out I did not state in my response to the marketing director that the proposal was 'nonsense', I said it was 'ill advised'. I do have some level of tact. ;)

In the music co question, I kinda advised they shouldn't implement ABB because they currently have other bigger issues to deal with. For example the Finance director left because the 4 shareholders managed the 4 departments and would set their budgets how they liked. Even if they implement ABB, they haven't dealt with this yet so it'll be difficult for ABB to affect anything. Does this make sense to anyone, can I hope to score some marks on this?

There was a line in the exhibit that said the marketing direction wants us to write why each point is bad basically in regards to the quotes. I think most people missed that ! That’s why the quotes were such nonsense as they wanted us to explain why they’re incorrect and suggest correct point

I also had the 50 mark question on EVA with the first 6 marks on new entrants (which completely shocked me, knew the basics of EVA but I didn’t think almost half the exam would be on it) , Q2 on balanced scorecard and q3 on benchmarking. After reading these comments I think I completely messed up q1 on Eva as I thought it was a suitable performance measure! Did anyone else think or say this??

I wrote something along the same lines. I said it was complex and time consuming & that they’d have to weigh up the pros (which i’d listed previously) with the fact the finance team was smaller because the FD left & would the now smaller finance team have capacity to put this method in to use

I got these three questions 1. Budgeting for divisions ABB and it's benefits Rolling budget calculation ERPS 2. Performance pyramid relevance to the scenario Problems with non financial indicators 3. Benchmarking exercise BPR I completed question 1 and 3 but couldn't complete much of question 2. So maybe attempted 80-85% Did anyone else face this issue?

Exactly the same, spent far too long on Q1 and only got to attempt Q3 and a rough stab at q2, why did others say they go EVA questions, very confused, that was the one topic i was looking forward too, and i got budgeting for q1 instead

loissaunders98 wrote:There was a line in the exhibit that said the marketing direction wants us to write why each point is bad basically in regards to the quotes. I think most people missed that ! That’s why the quotes were such nonsense as they wanted us to explain why they’re incorrect and suggest correct point

But the quotes were not nonsense, in fact only one of them was easily refuted (that it would encourage short-term thinking) The other concerns from the employees about having no control over EVA, not knowing how to contribute to EVA, and not understanding the EVA calculation were, for me, entirely valid criticisms of the proposal. I got my EVA calculation completely wrong, mind you. It was a total horror show for me!

for the employee concerns on how they could help create value I suggested using VBM along with EVA and for the employees to be part of this somehow but for the majority of this bit of the q had no idea what to put and wasted time on it then ran out of time completely on the last q :(

That’s why I still think this question was stupid. If it was 1 mark each then fine but 15 points in total of 40 is laughable. And I found the same that in fact these comments mostly weren’t bad but the requirement was to say why they are bad.

I made reference to the 4 founders making decision at division level too, suggested a new FD and 4 MAs per division

How is it that others had different questions. Were there 2 APM papers?

what was your answers to these questions?

Got EVA in Q1. Just testing only EVA for too many marks was unfair, and stupid questions from employee on EVA was just waste lot of time and effected Q2 Q3 as well. We never learned to much about EVA. that was beyond expectation infact beyond need of testing.

I knew EVA was a regularly examined topic, but to have an entire section A on it with the exception of the threat of new entrants question, was challenging. The final part of Q1 on the employee concerns of EVA was also difficult, with 15 marks available with only four conerns! They could have asked another question (information systems etc) to split the marks. Q2 on Benchmarking, BPR and Q3 on dimensions and the share scheme reward system were ok I felt.

We should have been better aware of the new exam format to understand questions, especially 20 professional marks. EVA question decides to check our communications skills and how we are sceptical on the issues. My understanding was that rather than technical knowledge, our professional skills would have given a better mark on these questions definitely. I have practically used EVA in my working environment so it was ok for me anyhow we need to go beyond technical knowledge to score these types of questions.