June 2020 topics and How I pass APM June 2020 as 1st attempt by self-studying!

Hi everyone,
I write this right after receiving a PASS for P5 for June 2020. I was fortunate to stay among a few countries which allow June exam took place. Please note that this was my 1st attempt for P5 after 5 years break. I did not take any courses, merely studying by myself so I was super scary as the prior pass rates had been so low. I also passed P4 in March 2020 exam by self-studying.

My first sharing is about June exam topics. Some small sub-questions may be forgotten but I think >90% will be showing below. The topic was totally different from what happened since September 2019, no EVA, no VBM or whatsoever.

Question 1. VFM 3E, Balance Scorecard (definition and applied), KPI, lean techniques (7S) – applied for a public organisation case, whose function is granting approval for new medical drugs. If you want to practice more on this type of cases, I would suggest to look at question 16 Quark Health care, 26 Beeshire Local Authority, 28 Tosemary and Rhyme Hospital, 38 Pharmaceutical Technologies (2013 Pilot Paper) in BPP revision kit. In fact, the question was a combination of all the above questions.

Question 2. Decision rules, lean info system (to manage the wide range of supply chain) – applied for a case of a company which look for expansion. Please familiarise yourself with all the underlying meaning and use of maximin, maximax, minimax, expected value. And don’t forget to bring the calculator to facilitate the calculation request.

Question 3. Performance pyramid, Performance Measures, Reward system. This was about a rubber company which develop their own model for strategic evaluation. What requested was to compare how the model reflect the company’s objectives through performance measures, compare the criteria between the company own model vs. performance pyramid.
A reward scheme was mentioned as part of the question which I myself applied the building block to get some ideas

My second sharing is about my approach towards P5 self-studying. You may or may not find it applicable to yourself, so be flexible to find the way you feel comfortable with. I started by reading through the knowledge then go straight to do all the …exam past papers. For each questions I did them carefully to draw a conclusion regarding type of questions, areas to study further, take a note/mindmap for my revision. Then, I moved to do as much as possible the BPP revision kit based on the areas which I find the most important and may be repetitive over and over.

Finally, my advices to you guys are to practice as much as you can, write things down (not just read), write concise, precise piece of paragraph by jumping straight to what the question asking, no need for long but not relevant things. I often break each para into 3 parts: 1 sentence to summarise your opinion (usually to answer the question), 3-4 sentences to figure out the issues in the cases and your comments (could be good issues or inappropriate ones, depends on your point of views), 1-2 sentences to conclude by making recommendation based on your opinions and what you think the system could improve.

I hope you guys find it useful as each persons might develop their own experience on grasping knowledge. You will surely feel discourage sometimes, just imagine that one day you become a professional, all those cases could be real situations you may deal with. So stay focus and consistent to what you are pursuing!

I am now continuing my studying for the last paper SBR for the September exam. Such a pleasure to receive all sharing from you who have passed. Again, wish everyone a good luck and I believe we shall meet up with each other one day as ACCA chartered holders!