SBLJune 2021 ACCA SBL exam was - Instant Poll and comments

Hello everyone Do anyone know how can we apply for rebooking? My exam was closed automatically 1 hours before and I was not able to complete the paper. I already tried finding this rebooking option through the book exam but there is no such option of rebooking available at the moment. P.S. I already wrote an email to ACCA

What points did you write?

1) a)critically evaluate new CEO leadership ,contrast with previous ceo b)Critically assess the staff representative's email, consider whether to yes or not to change leadeship style (total 24m) ex ceo will empowered to make decision some unpaid staff doesn't have a profit-motive new ceo just imposed and ask them to do 2)assess charity’s course portfolio and recommend improvements use the public sector portfolio matrix, just like BCG but unable remember the name , nevermind as long apply the theory 4 courses -computer skills for beginners - need drops , -website design - need increase, but not place available , consider to take from other course places -find a job - need almost constant, good efficiency even make profit, reinvest/reduce subsidy to other course. -business skills - need drops, efficiency not good as lot of subsidy on this,close the course but it is condition set by council..... (11m only) 3) a)risk management approach they identify 150 risk ,no assessment of probability or severity mitigation action not appropriate. action not effectiveness but no one cares. b)External stakeholders who are interested in charity’s Internal control and why we share the information to them 4 income Council - more information may affect their decision not to cut the funds to us. Corporate - friends of director , tell them as new ceo comes Personal - international issue that misuse the money in charity, tell them to improve confidence Participant - tell them because the price will change ,they need to know why (total 29m) 4)a) financial and non financial performance of emarketing proposals NPV positive initial investment - no enough money but mention the building can use for loan on going investment - last amount for 3 years no inflation , large cash outflow estimation of 25 % and 15 % additional donation based on the marketing company past commercial experience, not charity ,uncertainty on the figure Non financial talk about inefficiency of their newsletter send by post ,is a big waste q&A inefficiency and unable engage stakeholder ,new one will better only 500,000 poeple in the country , emarketing can international. there was a estimation increase in booking , fit to objective . recommendation is yes because the charity suffering about income,with the high waste of operation. b)managing change about emarking proposal - lewin 3 stage as format , not sure how to answer (total 36m)

Charities were straight forward. CEO was commercial and his leadership wasn’t a right fit. It was annoying because Q4, prof marks for appraising e marketing but all my financials pretty much said these guys are winging it here. Think CEO sister taking him for a mug

Q3b, the exhibit told us who the external stakeholders were but I didn’t do the people who were doing the course, couldn’t explain why or how they would care about external controls. Had to change it from course people to the bank, low on cash and they will need to get a loan

I’ve put something along the lines of participants being interested due to the potential impact on reputation of the charity. Although it’s not a professional body it still issues certificates for some of the courses which the employers would look at, if the reputation isn’t good the certificates could be worthless in the employment search.

I was thinking this but it still didn’t answer the question about internal controls. The prof marks said we had to convince them to share internal controls so I took it out and swapped it with banks. Tried to put myself in their position. When I went to Uni I couldn’t care less about internal controls, I just wanted education so I wasn’t sure how to convince the board to share internal controls with people paying for a course

For the last question, how the marketing director will manage the change, can we use the Kotter and Schlesinger methods of dealing with resistance to change?

guess tell them face by face and not email this time

Hi guys - i don’t understand why some comment about Leadership style and some other- i just wonder was morning exam different than evening??! My q1 clearly asked about competitive forces not leadership!? Also about stakeholders (q1)

Couldn’t think of a model. Had to use inclusion, CEO has made changes without informing the team and same with the proposal. Get them more involved by handling to social media account. Cost charity doesn’t have to pay to UC Used training, they provide training for wider community so provide training for colleagues. Follows the mission statement and if they are trained they would be able to add input and feel valued Tried to add performance objectives but I couldn’t wing that for the marketing development of a charity I did add to make them feel involved as if their contributions matter since CEO had said they sucked at what they did. They could have a voucher payment per contribution of suggested ideas which could be implemented. This idea is done in construction where if staff notice a health and safety issue and a way to rectify it they can get upwards of £100 added to their salary. Something like this would be nice for marketing department considering the economic environment city was in

Question looked very easy but as it had been in some period past, but i still wonder why only 50% had been passing for sometimes now

Yep, i also had your version. Started exam at 15:45 Berlin time. Last question on sponsor / project manager was stupid. Otherwise i dont find the exam very difficult...

I did the one with lots of stakeholder questions, competitive advantage, dodgy art course and cyber security. Not much model use. Lots of common sense and some knowledge on cyber security and project management. Finished with about 50 mins to go so did some editing and reviewing. It’s hard to take it all in at the start. Exhibit order didn’t match the question order initially. And 8 exhibits is a lot!

Had exact same paper

exam wasn't really hard, no slides, no models, question were fair, but it was too long. 8 Exhibits is too much specially when you have to cross-information for the same task. didnt manage to start question 4b, although I had some ideas to write, shame Regarding internal controls: donors needs to know that there is internal control in place to assure them that their funds are used appropriately and there is no fraud, misuse of money or illegalities. Students data needs to be protected and secured, control needs to be in place to make sure no one has access to their data. Council: gives funds with the condition of having significant internal control in place therefore must share. Employees/volunteers, job security and salary pay stable, controls in place to make sure the charity is run smoothly to keep the jobs. Community: charity exists to offer services to the community to make a positive change to their personal and social live, also transparency of how the money is used, especially after the media release, controls needs to be in place to avoid such misuse of funds, controls needs to be shared to re-assure them that NCCP is using the resources available in a fair way and on the benefits of the community of North Ceeville.

@Tom85 I was wondering why everyone talks non-sense! To be honest morning exam seems more interesting and logic- our was really stupid! I couldnt think of Any relevant theory- on competitive advantage on charity I was like wtf dude! Same operational manager asked to do it project management- stupid again! Was a quite odd exam- you could have an IT project manager sitting it and probably randomly pass it!

Charity Case Study Q1 A) Identify internal and external stakeholders and how to manage them B) Sources of competitive advantage Q2 A) Approaches to internal control systems and evaluate the effectiveness of them B) identify which external stakeholders would want to know about the internal controls and why NCCP should share these with them Q3 A) Evaluate all 4 courses offered B) viability of the art project Q4 A) why cyber security is important to the charity and how they can take steps to implement this B) Write an email to CEO on behalf of OD as to why he should be project sponsor but not project manager Only really liked the first half of q1 & 2, all of q3 was fine and the second part of q4. Gonna be a close call. Reply if any of you guys had comments on these questions!

What did you guys put for sources of competitive advantage? I went down the line of Porter's diamond not sure if that was the correct though?

I thought it was an awful q for a charity! Worst one of the lot. I was also tempted to go down the Porter’s diamond but didn’t felt I could write enough on it. Opted for CEO’s commercial expertise and a few other v small bits

I had same version Q1 a. Explained interest/power for different groups, keep informed, satisfied ect b. Sources of competitive adv just explained whatever came to my mind: Staff, Location, Management team-new CEO brings fresh ideas, commercial background, diversity, owned building-no need to pay rent, good relationship management with long standing donors, Q2 a. Evaluated current approach and provided recommendations under following headings Leadership, Risk identification, assessment, awareness, attitude, monitoring ect b. same groups as in Q1 just explained why they need info, they fund providers, value for money 3Es, transparency, reputation Q3 a. could be used matrix hotbox, golden fleece. b. used SAF Q4 run out of time All in all paper was fair compare to previous sittings, knew everything just time pressure

tomodon wrote:Charity Case Study

Q1 - Stakeholders, I wrote about 5 Council, Students, Community, Corporate Investors and something else I cant remember. Just linking to what they contribute/receive and then referring as Keep informed satisfied etc. 1b) Advantages I wrote they're ability to subsidise courses due to donations, then wrote that they will lose this if they do not manage the correct stakeholders linked to council threatening less cash. Then corporate donations saying that if they dent tarnish reputation they could cause issues, I also said there is an opportunity to work closer with corporations to identify skill shortages and involve them in sponsoring courses to train people for those jobs I said volunteers are a key advantage linking to the benefit they provide cash wise and objective wise with the finding a job course. I also linked how they have the chance to lose these linking to staff survey advising for it to be managed properly. I wrote another strength is the personal donations linking to finances showing loss would have been 50% bigger without, linking that they have an opportunity to build on this if they successfully place students into jobs as they will be keen to support future students. I have no idea if I did part b correctly though

This is what ive got NCCP - charity 1a) Internal and external stakeholders and how to manage them - 16mks - Gov / local council - Corporate charities - Employees - Volunteers - Regulators 1b) competitive advantages of NCCP - 10mks - Charitable status - Gov funding - CEO - executive experience - Long standing donors 2a) the need to report internal controls to external stakeholders - 12mks - Gov funding dependent on good internal controls - Regulators for charitable license 2b) importance of Risk Management and how to improve Risk Management - 12mks - Identify 150 risk and make a risk register for only 2 risks - For of which the operational director is responsible 3a) viability of courses - 6mks - Not enough profit calcs ?? - More non-financial - Demand for website design - Decreased demand for basic computer skills due to increased computer literacy amongst general public 3b) analyse art course - 8mks - Scepticism: - Financial projections - Bias for passion for arts - Independent research of demand of forecasts - Capabilities / resources 4a) why cyber security is important to the charity and how they can take steps to implement this - 10mks 4b) splitting role of project sponsor / manager - 6mks

I talked about factor conditions as in how they were placed in the community due to the founder and his strong ties with the locals, therefore driving the corporate donations. And demand for courses due to the economy and unemployment. And then talked about volunteers and how they were an advantage as the course they led was the most income generating. I think I repeated the same point several times throughout the paper. It was not difficlut but the time pressure did make me panic!

tomodon wrote:Charity Case Study

Got same questions, I couldn’t really figure out what to write about the competitive advantages as it wasn’t really mind clear what advantages there were as compared to other charities and there wasn’t much there to go by. I didn’t think the scenario given was hard but it was only the time pressure which caused me to panic and as a result loss my composure to gather my thoughts. I ran out of time and only got to the question regarding the project sponsor and project manager. I gave it a good attempt and wrote a lot for question 1 regarding the internal and external stakeholders and how to manage them. I used the Mendelow model - interest and power. This was the only model that I have used for this exam, the rest just common sense based on the scenario. Learnt all the model which I feel like a waste of time now. Hard to judge how much to write in order to score the marks without over running on time for other questions. Oh well, I’m glad I took my final two exams today, let’s see how it goes. Even if I do fail SBL this time, I could at least have an idea on the volume of text to write to achieve what marks.

What does sharing information on internal controls mean in practice? What level of detail is shared? Is this different between charities and companies?

1a) CEO email: ??? and staff impact of email; consider tone and style Tone: not nice. use of "pathetic" is not professional (not even in company) Style: very direct (no greeting in email, very straight to the point) Impact on staff: low motivation. people might leave (especially volunteers) old CEO: participatory, left decisions to staff (which model to use?) new CEO: "tells" (autocratic). not appropriate (especially for volunteers: you need to convince them, motivate them) 1b) comment on criticism in email from staff rep and whether CEO should adopt different leadership style rep made some unsubstantiated points: staff miss old CEO (true but not fault of new CEO), CEO only focuses on money (imho not warranted from email), pointless rules (which rules?). leadership style not appropriate: charity is all about community. needs to be more participatory. CEO should meet people face to face, build connection. get them more involved. However, it's clear CEO has a lot of experience.

2a) Evaluate course portfolio Computer basics: Numbers going down. Course out of date. First course and not updated since (i.e. 20 years old) IT changes quickly Course could be dropped Council puts emphasis on IT skills Don't drop but modernize course Web development course Numbers going up Course is full Skills in demand. Council like IT skills Increase price (high demand, marketable skills) Add more capacity Find a job Only profitable course Profitable because run by volunteers (idea for other courses) Expand Business skills Popular Makes huge loss Why? Because it's new? Or other reasons? Course can't be dropped because of council requirement Charity has connections to companies in community (company donors). Ask them to teach course for free to reduce costs

3a comment on risk management approach 150 risks is good but needs prioritisation. Identify likelihood and impact Needs clear owners. Risks assigned to executive team members randomly. Do they own it? Agreed to do risk exercise again at some point in future. Needs clear, regular schedule. Risks change all the time Establish risk committee (not sure this answer was appropriate) I did not comment on the example risk register but I'm sure there was a problem that that could have been pointed out

3b identify stakeholders that are interested in internal controls; justify whether they should get information about internal controls Council: gives a lot of funding. Funding might stop if they don't see internal controls. Council has a lot of interest and power Company donors: give donations. Smaller but still significant. If one company stops, other companies might also stop (close community). This would increase interest/power Individual donations / public: charity scandals in newspaper: increased interest. not much power. but still (Is interest/power, i.e. Mendelow, the right model?) Justification: donations would stop (especially council). This is a bit weak. What else could I have said? Maybe charities working in the public interest? Other stakeholders I did not mention: maybe regulation