APM*** P5 June 2013 Exam was.. Post your comments ***

P5 left me flummoxed. A situation of the more you look, the less you see. I actually danced at the beginning of the exam and ended up depressed. A Porters 5 forces answer for a PESTEL scenario, what has the world come to. ABC is no longer just ABC and Transfer pricing has become spanish. Totally depressing.

Exam looked way easy at first, but didnt prove to be so as I got deeper into the it. I planned on doing my options questions first, however, i was caught dead in my tracks when I could not fathom WHAT they were asking me to do in both the abc and tp question after SO much exam preparation on BOTH areas. I took a while just deliberating which one I would earn more marks in. I figured I would give the TP question a shot, i have never re-read an exam question SO much in my life. Then the Porter's Five Forces question, easy to ans regarding the 5 forces, but linking it to performance measures, that was the difficulty in that question, wouldn't be an ACCA P5 exam if they didnt throw something difficult in there wud it? No.1 for the love of me I couldnt remember the characteristics of service industries. However, I hope I earn enough marks in question 1, that i can secure a pass. Keeping everyone in my prayers.

dear boomboom , It does not affect your performance and marks even though you forgot to tick on the box that you have attempted the question

<cite>@bahram said:</cite> Did the porters 5 forces question first, was easy to relate to porter itself, but hard to late it to performance management, i realised later that i misallocated my time and spent 40mins doing the 16mark question *facepalm* Then went for question1. The scenario was fairly easy to understand, but the requirements were really confusing, atleast for me, however managed to throw all my knowledge on the paper, some measures i wrote were really lame. Realised iam over time on this one aswel, moved to do the last question Made a bad choice of choosing transfer pricing, could have written more on abc i guess, but whichever i would have choosen, i had like 5 mins to write, and thus managed to write only 5 lines :( Iam disappointed, had the knowledge, but couldnt do much with my time :(

It does not affect your performance and marks even though you forgot to tick on the box that you have attempted the question

If you notice in ACCA website, they had posted a past year paper under the heading "Sample question relevant for exams from December 2010" this almost similar to the first question in June 13..OMG...I jz notice it...

For porter what did you guys choose as your measures? I'm sure there is a mark for whatever you chose. Mine I think were lots of chat and then concluded each with the following New entrants: number of new start ups entered to the business environment - to assess the level of competition Suppliers: time taken for supplies to be delivered - in order to measure the production process Buyers: average cost of final vehicle - to see if in line with buyers needs in recession against alternatives Substitutes: level of emissions from all substitutes including reduced emission petrol diesel Competition: can't remember For this one

Q1 was ok answer well on every part, then went to section two ... It was a mess there waiting for me.. even not able to write a single appropriate line for any question mentioned. Confirmed to sit again. It was a worst paper I had ever attempted in my ACCA career. How we can write to ACCA if we feel the paper was really poorly presented by examiner ?

Many thanks to opentuition for the good work, the p5 tips was about the most accurate, truly wish I had followed it. Alex the examiner wasnt fair this time, the time was grossly insufficient plus, the riddles in each of the question requirement that must be unraveled. Alex without fore knowledege of this question will find himself in our shoes. Q1.a. SHIP + T works well here, appraisal of report given. Its important we state the +ves & -ves, a balanced view. The report was okay to some extent, but could be improved. BSC also wansnt comprehensive enough, a broader perspectives maybe needed. I guess is the reason the CEO will rather use F&M building block, its got more dimensions. Q2. ABC, I made assumptins here infavour of ABC. This is in line with the CEO's view. I couldnt figure out the calculation bit. Q3. 5forces, hard to figure out on time. Measure each force base on the % of sale increase, mrk share, repeat sales, complaints + customers satisfaction etc. Overall, not much of a fair paper but passAble. All the best!

When l have read reqirements i thought that do easely At least Q1 and Q3 but it seems that main objective of examiner not to check our knowkedge and application of it but he wants just confuse the sudents writing such terrible cases which difficult to understand and need a lot of time just understand it. Such Qs demotivating srudents, they must to be achievable! My openion is examiner doing this delibaratly to ensure inflow of fees for second attempt for this exam. Can any body address this to Acca?,!

Did question 1 quite well. Then moved to ABC question. But it was a disaster. I couldn't figure out how to calculate the cost for ABC. Then left the question and moved to question 3. After reading the requirement it was understood that the question was tough since they have asked the impact of five forces on performance management. Therefore left the Q3 and did a little bit of Q4 and the part 2 of question 2. I think I need to repeat

<cite>@TERRENCE said:</cite> What were the other topics

<cite>@TERRENCE said:</cite> What were the other topics

me the same the third victim

I did Question 1,3,4 Question 1 was ok, BSC but then i couldnt retrace the building blocks model in my mind even though i made mention of it in my answer but i really took a go to analyse the standards and rewards etc... i hope that i get some marks there Question 3 was ok, tried as far as possible to link the 5 forces model to performance management by saying that it needs to measure the time taken to develop a fuel project, then Engine fuel carbon emission comparision, then ability to procure enough rare components, ability to achieve successful projects, and also ability to get more Engine manufacturer contracts and secure infrastructures ( i labelled it as garages) as this one is against its customer dependance. The more infrastructure it has will be a performance measure.... I dont know if someone can advise if i am correct... Question 4 did not have enough time.... I really hope and trust that i will pass

Cannot comprehend the thought of waiting for another six months!! ACCA should seriously consider giving us the opportunity to sit for exams after 3 months , six months is too long , painful and counterproductive! ..Examiner should consider the time, money and effort we put in every semester before writing vague questions like that which test our reading and writing speed and ability to catch his trap in requirement rather measuring our actual performance!

Aaaahhhhhh........ Again did the same mistakes like last attempt. Questions were not difficult but lack of preparation made them difficult. I missed 25 marks Question & missed & messed a lot in attempted question. Looser here dudes :(

<cite>@nimrah said:</cite> can any1 tell me about venture capitalists risk appetite>

Hi - I answered this bit. There was an article on Business Angels in Student accountant. I'm not sure whether it was directed at P4 or P5. They are similar if not the same as Venture Capitalists. Their risk appetite tends to be more averse as their portfolio is limited. As they tend to have hands on in the companies they support financially, they do not have so many. Also they can take some time to decide to invest in a company which is usually in the fast growth "rising star", sector. They will investigate the company, see how well they are run, identify their managers attitude to hard work and then give their expertise in areas where the managers are struggling like marketing or getting them contacts with the right people. I'm hoping that was the right answer and the right reasoning to their attitude to risk. Hope that helps. Trouble is if you take into account all the articles in SA alone, as well as reading a good paper, The Economist and the text books, it would be difficult to take everything in. However, sometimes common sense may prevail to get a point or two and it was only five marks in all for that bit. I sat P4 as well and had concentrated on that one - so think I probably didn't too well on P5 - never felt so under prepared. Hopefully will have passed P4 and re-sit P5 in December, fingers crossed

Yea i agree with someone who said Alexx Watt should go.. Overall it was not a difficult paper but time constraint made it difficult to analyse it properly, its was a lil confusing also..

lmighty P5, just trusting God

Questions seem easy but a lot of topics in Q1 and not enough time for us! So how can I pass that easy Qs....?

Q1 was ok, quite many different aspects of performance management in one question...which I guess was expected… I did Q1 first and noticed it was taking too much time, so rushed last part...just did conclusion part of report hoping to get professional marks for layout ;) Q2 ABC very confusing, but reading it slowly helped, although it took much more time than expected. Got same prices as others here... around 8 and 108 based on current system. ABC costing turned out bit different for me, around 12 for standard dish and around 86-88 for specialised dishes (can’t rememeber exactly). Analysis showed that complains form a big part of costs, so quality control rolled out naturally in part b...wrote about prevention and appraisal cost and internal failure costs, etc. O4 Once done with Q2 there was literally no time left for proper attempt at Q4. I read Q4 in 15 mins given; hoping my brain would be generating some ideas on it...Reading Q3 at that point made no sense so went ahead with Q4. I just rushed through looking if there is an external market for products they making, would standard costs be better than actual costs. Also made some reasoning behind FD proposal on changes, but nothing on part c...mmm...my first attempt at P5, but really hope my effort will score enough.

Question 1 is an example question on ACCA website posted online since January and originally from June or December 2010 company in the example was Armstrong …… They just replace the benchmark part with Fitzgerald and Moon. https://www.accaglobal.com/content/dam/acca/global/pdf/p5_2010_dec_sample_q.pdf Also the Question 2 ABC and.Question 3 are past questions too.

venture capitalists risk appetite is risk seeking as always. venture capital has high interest rates to the capital invested. in question 3

I echo previous sentiments, the questions in section b were far too long and a challenge to reading skills, very unfair and not a chance it could be conpleted in full within the 3 hours. I urge everyone to contact ACCA and fill out this form in ACCA connect to inform https://www2.accaglobal.com/contacts/connect/

Let me share my experience with you guys, which might help calm some of you people down. Candidates here who have attempted only 80% of the paper, and attempted it well, will PASS. But when i say attempted it, it means you have tailored you're answer to the scenario in its totality. I can admit to people here, that after the June 2012 P5 exam, i was here on the P5 forum and was whining about how hard & time pressured the paper was. I had only attempted 75% of the paper. I was quite sure about the first question of 50 marks, but wasn't so much about the 2nd question of 25 marks, which I had just rushed through due to me running short of time. However, a good thing, that i did while rushing was that I did not fill my answer with unrequired gibberish and just wrote whatever i could grasp from the scenario. I did not even attempt the 3rd question. And I passed with a 54. Even though it was just a pass, in hindsight i was more than relieved with this pass. I guess you people should try and relax a bit. Its all in your head right now, and most of you guys will get through provided you wrote the right things. Good luck guys :)

<cite>@nevyn1975 said:</cite> I think that was the worst paper I have ever sat - nothing like the pilot paper in structure and agree the Porter's Five forces question was really badly worded. Hopefully done enough in the part A question to make up for the disaster I had in part B.

I spend too much time on section a,thus leave a lot of thing about transfer pricing I know NOT presented on the answer paper:( In Section A,why it is difficult to apply BSC??I have no idea about it And what about your answer of ABC?using ABC.the price of special dish is higher than that of the standard dish at about $100,as mentioned in the senario

<cite>@boomboom said:</cite> I did the same, forgot to mark which questions I did due to time pressure!! Anyone know what happens in these circumstances?

me too! but i think it's ok

first questioin ok i did well but abc abm n transfer pricing is too hard,what examiner are expecting from us i cant imagine, we are just student not 20 years experience teacher, its not good strategy of acca

<cite>@tajinder2222 said:</cite> echo what the rest of you say....way too much time pressure...however im sure they take this into account when marking...they cant and dont expect model answers as per revision kits and past papers....they are looking for main points to be explained so don'd worry so much if on some u scribbled down a few lines and dont think u have scored highly enough...remember we only need 50 to pass.... people feeling too negative about their efforts...its not the end of world if you fail...in the resit you will have experience and much better knowledge depth as you will have studied p5 for around 4 months in total...maybe more for some...i thought P2 was tough when i did it in december and everyone said it was the hardest exam....NO CHANCE...the option papers regardless of which one you pick are the toughest...dont be too hard on yourselves...this is last hurdle for most of us...so learn where u went wrong and do better in december...i think another problem with acca is there is no resit period which is a shame... thoughts on the questions....i didnt even look at number 3 and it seems to have got some bad press here already so did well to avoid... 1) first parts was a gift f5 work, second part said evaluate the performance report itself not the performance (as some ppl seem to have done) and mention something on the metrics, bsc was a gift as scenario was packed with info, the problems threw me with regards to implementing, and the 14 marker was good too but ran out of time a bit and went of on a tangent...mentioned as much theory and related what i could....the motivational part at the start of last part was strange... reading time for the scenarios on options was lengthy!!!! too much to understand.... 2) abc and abm...the first part was standard absorbtion costing...the abc had been done for you...u just had to compare them...second part was tricky...wrote a costs of quality, tqm, six sigma...bits and pieces...time was of the essence....might be completely wrong 4) transfer pricing...did what i could on each part...wrote about what was wrong with their transfer price for part a, part b was a gift just do the p and l again with vc and part 3 was similar...but didnt write enough.... all in all a tough exam (rather than actual todays paper) i think...i dont think the paper was particularly difficult....so tricky parts in the options but it cant all be easy....it was far more written compared to all others...no eva, npv, mirr, roi, ri calculations and no general data calculations as we have been used too...

I do think you will get a PASS! you win on your attitute thank you for your representation:)

Venture capitalists are risk seekers, but they would always advocate measures to reduce risk to an acceptable level that would interest them to invest. I agree with @susanprice, you must trump your answer with logic, but your knowledge on 'what's logical or common sense' comes from extra reading off materials outside the text book. Alex Watt comes in as an ex-management/ strategic consultant, bringing in fresh cases that challenge students to be flexible and quick-headed. It's an accurate scenario of your future self working in a management-related job, and you must be always prepared with whatever your boss or the merciless, competitive environment will throw at you. This is adequate of the P-level exams to train final level students who shall take the final step to become professional accountants. I echo what @goodluk has stated here. I was equally stunned by the lengthy Q2 and Q3 case scenarios back from June 2012 exam, and they forced me to digest the information very quickly under the immense time pressure. Despite the stress, I tried my best to keep the answer relevant with what was asked. Marking schemes will appreciate your attempt at answering closely to the question requirements, and closely to the case scenario. If you have done so, you should be on a good track towards passing this paper. (For example, Q1 asked you to evaluate the performance report, but did you got off-tracked by evaluating the performance of the company instead? :0 )

Hi there, did anyone do P5 in Watford? Not very professional place, very noisy - heard music from outside, one of the clock kept falling from the wall, banging noise during the whole exam, someone next to me was sniffling the whole time. After one hour I completely lost it and stopped concentrating. I have complained but not sure if there is any point. Has anyone had the same experience? Thanks Monika

Same experience in Mauritius..Exam was held in the hall of a College..Students were shouting outside..singing..banging on tables..even if invigilators tried several time to tell the students outside that exam was going on...they continued with their random noise .....Hope ACCA chose better venue next time..