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Ok exam. A bit generic on type on type of strategic changes based on joining a joint venture.
Q1 was on culture
Q2 what to improve in the internal control in order to go in the join venture.Manage to finish the whole exam finger crossed.
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Seemed very woolly compared to practice questions. Did anyone else think the pre seen material was not of much use in answering the questions?
I got value chain and intrapreneurship for task 1, benefits and problems when tendering for the championship organized by a public entity, additional risks and managing them for task 2 and task 3 big data. Don’t know what to really say, i was a bit surprised on task 1. I did it online, from my home and the system was crap. i have very good internet and I do not think that my laptop would be the issue, i think it is rather the system used by them. it was loading extremely slow, had to click several times on next, it was really hard to copy paste, as it had delay. very annoying.
Agree with earlier poster, pre seen seemed to not be used much. Question 3 was about responsible leadership which hadn’t been taught in my studies so completely flapped that one. Definite fail from me, very annoyed.
Not sure on the point in all the pre seen information I had been preparing for innovative ways to get business and talk about AI etc
The exhibits were unnecessarily long, I finished the paper but ran out of time, so q2 in section A (the memo about intrapreneurship was very weak – this was a 16 mark question, so I’m not pleased at all.
Hoping the rest of the paper went well.
Section A
(i) Porter’s value chain: IT, Procurement, HR, Marketing and Services
(ii) IntrapreneurshipSection B
(i) Benefits/ issues regarding tender for sports event
(ii) Memo about Risk managementSection B (2)
(i) Two slides about benefits and negatives regarding Big Data with notesAnyone else struggle to finish the paper?
Question 1 a – Bro what in the world was this question? I COMPLETELY FORGOT WHAT IT WAS LOL
Question 1 b – Advantages and disadvantages of Joint venture
Total: 40 marks
I recall spending 1hr 30min on this, I better have bagged most of these marks >_>Question 2 a – Internal control changes needed for the JV to be effective
Question 2 b – Changes needed to strategy direction for JV to be effective
Total: 40 marks
This one I spent 1 hr 15 min on, and can’t quite say for certain whether I was making relevant points or not but fingers crossedQuestion 3 – Responsible leadership in improving business performance and responsible leadership in reporting to stakeholders
Total: 20 marks
I kind ran out time but I hope I’ve made a difference with the first two and that the professional skills marks will save me!!Not gonna lie if the morning variant would have come up for me, I would have cried. Fair play to you all giving that one a decent attempt.
You had the same as me.
Question 1 was writing a report on the informal and reactive strategic decisions. Spent a long time on this too.
Yes I think they probably change the actual questions close to the time because of the youtube presenn analysis
Dika inexperience guy was included for a purpose
Hi mate, for the big data benefits and ethical issues – did you find the responses to be identical to waht was already in the exhibit?
Yeah that question on intrapreneur was tough and in exhibit no info was there i wrote two or three points
Yes not much to take from pre seen especially when explaining what to improve in internal control if joining the joint venture.
By the way I wasn’t very surprised as I was expecting those topics. They said not to speculate from pre seen and it is proved.It is impossible to write 1 point per mark so I managed to finished based on doing about 70% of a question. Hope it will work!
I don’t like the other paper guys, I’m happy on what I got ?
Had the porters value chain along side intrapeneur and then a Youth Championship tender and then big data. All was OK, found the additional risks of doing the championship tender a bit difficult, couldn’t think of many more tbh as didn’t think there was enough info in exhibits etc…. the big data slides were so wierd aswell as I felt the exhibit said all the responses you needed to say word for word? The benefits and the ethical parts – found that odd I just tried to relate it back to the tender and Rodnim. Exhibits were not that helpful for additional info I feel, a lot was just knowledge
ButterfV you say not to speculate on the pre seen but you expected what you got? Surely you expect to d that based on the pre seen then?
What did you write for internal control changes? I don’t think I answered that one well at all 🙁
It was tricky exam altogether! Everything depends upon examiner, how they’ll mark.
Q.1A) Evaluation of proposal for Transitioning from informal culture to formal strategic set.
I used POPIT model – not sure!b) Tricky JV proposal with big Property Vendor company Bood (Have other event support like catering food, event staff). Tricky in terms of 3yrs. Agreement, Agreement Decision should be ASAP, Profit sharing instead of fixed fee for venues, clause: JV partner can not provide event service alone within 50km radius after JV agreement. Assessment on advantage and disadvantages of such JV proposal. Total 40 marks
2)a) prepare a Memo on necessary changes required in existing internal control system for such JV agreement with Bood.
b) Prepare report on additional changes required in existing strategies to include RISKs. Total 40 marks
3) a) Prepare 2 slides with notes on 1) Importance of Responsible Leadership to improve Rodnim’s performance. 2) Responsible Leader role in stakeholder engagement and reporting. Total 20 marks
Use of Pre-seen data and insights only 3-4%. Remainder was on application of in-depth knowledge and commendable common sense and presentation structure of answers…….Really Tricky compare previous question sets!!!
Joe, I was expecting questions based on pre seen but very generic not in depth ones. I had in my head joint venture last night and come up. But even if we think of what comes up than we couldn’t predict internal control so nothing is predictable in the end.
I forgot everything already but about internal control I think I mentioned Dika wasn’t appropriate there in her role, Jimmy in IT as well. The data storage of Bood should be checked.
Oh no I really don’t remember a question asking to include risks!! I hope I didn’t forger that one!!! Did anyone else got it? 2b?
Heyy – How I approached value chain qs:
For IT I spoke about the issues in Harland – how there’s emerging space for tech innovation I.e with AI, and how Rodnim is currently making use of the QR code system but in order to gain competitive advantage they could be doing more to meet the expectations from clients to be “innovative” e.g Big Data, or mapping system etc..
also challenged whether the use of QR codes is actually that innovative or whether Rodnim was forced to use the system bc of the external environment i.e it would be weird for Rodnim to still be on paper ticketing systems if all their competitors were using QR codes.
Expanded on how strategic drift is what’s slowing their margins (but referenced this back to IT), and to end I said – evidencing why they should prioritise IT if they want to strengthen their market position – something like that.
I followed the same approach for the other points, some required more detail than others – the common evaluation point was that all the changes from the analysis required huge capital investment so I recommended that changes should be done incrementally rather than all at once or prioritised according to business needs.
Unfortunately I got carried away – had I been more concise I probably would have been able to leave some time at the end – anyway it’s done now hopefully I passed.
Got the same set of questions.
I found them very tricky to even understand what they were asking? Very generic and very unclear all together. Nothing like other practice papers on the platform.
I was answering but only for the sake of writing things, however, not sure if I even understood each question.
So disappointed. I prepared very very well on the pre-seen and all possible scenarios, which unfortunately ended up being mostly irrelevant.
Everyone I talked with after the exam, has the same opinion .. don’t know why ACCA decided to make such confusion and unclear paper.
Reflecting more on the exam, I actually recall relying quite a bit on the pre-seen for my points.
The first question having 4 marks for showing scepticism in probing the introduction of a more inclusive and rational strategy (thanks Joe for reminding me what the first question actually was). I used the pre seen and the management meeting exhibit we got given on the day for this.The task brief was pointing towards the fact that the other two managers, together with Dika, wanted to be included in the decision making process. So I guess that’s what I probed.
I said Dika sounds like he is rightfully challenging the current arrangement, and has a lot of enthusiasm and fresh ideas to bring to the table as a recent graduate. However there is an argument to have against it, and it’s to do with his lack of real life experience in the industry; he might not yet have what it takes.
Mirza has been in the industry for 20 years and is and settled in her role, she could be the balancing act to Dika when it comes to real life experience. However on the other hand, having spent so long in the industry might make her less likely to embrace new technology and changes, less likely to push for the company to come out of their comfort zone. She’d also said in the exhibit on the day that changes to strategy will bring consistency and continuity – but that is actually not the case, in fact it is the complete opposite (please someone correct me if I’m wrong?). Change will actually shake things up and that’s the entire point, but it may be what is needed to capture more of that market share in the industry.
Jimmy is saying that he feels excluded from the greater picture, and he wants to get involved, however his current role is stretched thin as it is and in order for Saffy and Amanda to get undivided focus from him they will have to rethink his current responsibilities.
… I don’t know.
I also relied on the pre-seen to support my arguments FOR the joint venture. I said, we already know that Rodnim’s corporate clients are very lucrative for them from a profit perspective and that private clients are lacking in that sense, this would be a good opportunity to associate themselves with an established company such as Bood that have carefully marketed themselves towards a specific niche of the private clients sector which is prestigious, luxury events, and so Rodnim could benefit.
I also remember quoting the pre-seen when I was talking about the geographical constraints AGAINST the joint venture because of that 50km radius clause, corporate clients have events in major cities throughout the country and so do Bood. Therefore is this constraint worth passing onto their corporate clients and risk them taking their business elsewhere? We already know from the pre seen that private clients do not need to tender but corporate do. It’s going to be very easy for long term corporate clients of Rodnim to decline their tender in the future.
I think the exhibits helped in a way but definitely not as much as I thought they would, to begin with. Most of my quoted statements came from the pre-seen 🙁
Praying for all of us right now.
For internal control changes needed in order for the JV to be successful, marks were given for evaluation I believe?
Anyway I relied heavily on the pre-seen for that, especially the section of Rodnim’s IT systems.
I mentioned the software they use will need to be changed to the extent of allowing Bood access and permissions as well, so that they can also track progress of current events in real time if needed.Same goes for the bespoke app, Bood staff will require training on it to assist with scanning guests into the event (I did mention that this feature is not mentioned to be specific to corporate clients so, it could be that certain private events require it too, in which case Bood need to know all about it).
As for the mission on Rodnim’s website, I mentioned that that will need to change to show the mission of the JV instead, which could actually alienate long term corporate clients who might start to think that private events are taking centre stage in Rodnim’s focus and that needs to be handled carefully.
I also used the pre-seen for arguing that Bood will want to bring Rodnim’s client database, held offsite and managed by a third party, into their fold and control, which is likely to clash with Amanda and Saffy’s prominent views on independence but it may be a trade-off worth taking.
Anyway the more I think about that last question on leadership, the more I worry. I did not actually use the preseen at all. And isn’t commercial acumen meant to be demonstrated by linking theories with the study case?
I think I might have mentioned something about a leader needing to be environmentally aware especially with increased awareness in Harland about the impact of events on the environment. But whether that was on the money or not, I don’t know.Examiner specifically advice not to use info from pre-seen but the exhibits also lacked necessary information to answer questions. Such a tricky and odd exam it was. First question about value proposition so bizarre, it had nothing in exhibits to refer to while examiners always states to link to scenario
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I had the same questions and also found the wording unclear.
The 50km radius clause – I understood this applied to private clients only? Did I misread it?
Most of my answers were based on Rodnim shifting strategy to Prestigious private client focus, (mostly because I didn’t know how to approach the strategy change questions).
The 2b question – I also don’t remember mentioning risks, I think they asked for: Changes needed in strategy direction for JV to be effective, what factors to consider and what is their implication?
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