* June 2022 ACCA APM Exam Results * Instant Poll and Comments

Your advice please, I failed for the second time 40

Well the last few attenots I was close/marginal so it was exam technique mainly.

1) This paper rewards you for common sense/practical answers. There was a question I recall about some gas engineers and how their pay changes impact perf. I literally discussed about if I was gas company how would my engineers perf would be I.e pay disputes , strike actions, moving to different rivals. All this would impact the bottom line and also on the morale

2) as above do not try to use academic terms, i.e if question on Eva or roce don’t just say it’s value based.
3) look for indicators/clues in scenario. If a manufacturing company trades in capital intensive you know roce would be useful as they need to assess the performance of their assets
Or if a company trying to innovate with new technology then it would mean EVA would be useful since there will be high r and d costs and would be important to know the actual cash flows

4) read real life examples/articles online. I googled most of them. I.e look for manufacturing companies like Unilver performance report and see how they do kpi
This was so useful rather than read study text or material that tutors usually just go through in bog standard. This will help you with that commerical acumen that adds so much value to this exam

5) state your judgement where you are not sure when evaluating. Make asusmptions but justify it

Hope the above was helpful, it seems like a lot but I tried to give some practical pointers that worked for me rather than just generic pointers.

72% – second attempt (48% first attempt)

Here’s what I did differently
1. The BPP question kit was my best friend. I looked at as many Q&As for APM as possible. This helped on how I answered my questions

2. Used the PER approach (state the Point, Explain it and Relate it to a scenario from the question)

3. Attempt ALL questions; this may necessitate giving fewer points than you might like on some questions but as long as the points make sense you can give 2 out of the 3 points you’d have liked. You just keep it moving so that you have ample time to answer the rest

4. Mindset – you have to believe that you can do it and be calm enough to think while in the paper.

Good luck to you all!

6) one more thing to add to my last post is to read examiner reports. This was so valuable for me in passing because a lot of students misinterpret the questions. The marking report shows how to read the question correctly and how to put into application. And then I would suggest to compare it to your answer script

I got 84% (first time pass)

I used BPP Online Live Classes, and Open Tuition to study for this exam.

Some general advice I would give:

– Pay attention to how the examiners want you to structure your answers. If you follow Point, Explain, Relate then you can’t go wrong because it makes sure you always explain the point you’re making and are always relating to the scenario which is particularly important in this exam. Sometimes the exam can make you feel a bit overwhelmed and having an answer structure for each point can help you organise your thoughts.

– It is unlikely the examiner will give you information that isn’t relevant or can’t be used. Everything in that scenario will be there for a reason so if you can’t think of any points to make try and take it a sentence at a time and rack your brain for anything you can think of that is relevant which you can relate to the information.

– If you are stuck on a question and you’re running out of the allotted time for it, just move on. You’re more likely to get marks by at least attempting every question then by trying to perfect 1 or 2 of them. There are always easy “state the obvious” type answers which can make a difference to your score.

– Don’t try and “guess” what is coming up in the exam. This will just mean you are putting yourself in a difficult position if the topics you ignored come up. Try and cover everything even to a basic level so that if the area comes up you have something to say even if it isn’t much or doesn’t feel like it is great, just put it down.

– Lastly, if you’re really struggling with exam technique it is definitely worth taking a look at the APM technical articles, mainly the “Improving your Advanced Performance Management answers” both part 1 and part 2.

Good luck for anyone reading this if you are planning on taking the exam, and congratulations to those who have passed!

He is on YouTube..just search him up and you will see videos appear first thing and the videos are free!