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

After reading all posts I came to the conclusion that I’m not the only one who thinks that this paper was harder than previous ones. Q1 took most of my energy and then I had switched to the question on Porter’s 5 forces I spent a lot of time to carefully read the scenario and understand the question but got stuck with suggesting performance measures based on external business environment analysis. I overran the allocated time for this Q and then I rushed to the question on ABC on which I spent valuable time to understand TFQ in part A(((
To my mind the paper is really time pressured. I had no time to plan my answers carefully. If I start to plan carefully then I have no time to write all my ideas in the answer booklet for the time allocated. I cannot write more quickly as I think that my handwriting will be hard to understand. Guys, please advise how to prepare answer plan more effectively?

Q1 was ok.

With Q3, If succesfully applied 5 forces to the scenario without being able to link to performance measures should still get half of the marks.

Didn’t attempt Q2, looks like a difficult one compare to Q4 transfer pricing. Q4 looks easier from the start, but completely confused me after reading the question, read it again, more confused, and again, still confused. The layout of the report doesn’t help to understand the senario at all. By the time I realised I made wrong choice to attempt Q4, there was no time left.

Disappointed if I fail. It is torture for anyone to sit through an exam like this. really hope I don’t have to do it again!!!

a straight forward.. i think my calculator felt very bored durin paper :P.. However went all well .. Inshallah all hope for pass

Paper seemed ok at first glance. Did well on first option (#3), did better on 50 marker… attempted #4 and could not understand it. Maybe I was exhausted but I did many transfer pricing questions in preparing but none so vague (wow)… option questions appeared to be longer than the Question 1… hoping for the best.

Also suggested using the P/E ratio to see the markets perception – which was actually less favourable in 2013 than in 2012.

I used the P\E ratio also , less favourable in 2013 too, glad somebody else used it , thought I might have been thinking too far out side of the box !

Dear ACCA you should rename this paper as Advanced Time Management!

To all comrade!..I pretty much share the same feelings..no amount of preparation could prepare you for this! this paper needs to be more fair on students specially in regards to time given.

<cite> @05008967 said:</cite>
Great news 🙂 evaluation always includes think of improvements and the examiners tips were that he wanted to see people attempting to ‘add value’ to the organisations

I also suggested using EVA and TSR as part of the improvements to the BSC as ROCE is not correlated with shareholder value, which was one of their subsidiary aims?

<cite> @Blueberry said:</cite>
Help! I am going crazy. I attempted only 3 questions but marked all 4 in the booklet front page by mistake. The invigilator didn’t allow me to correct anything. Do you think it will be ok? Is this data for information purposes only or does it affect anything?

The exam itself was ok, the main difficulty I had was to link performance measurement metrics with Porter’s forces. A weird question, but hope that the most of 16 points was for naming the forces and relating them to the case.

Hey – I shouldn’t worry about this. I realised that I hadn’t filled the front page “questions answered box” at all when I sat P4 on Tuesday. I mentioned it to a passing invigilator this morning and he said so long as you block out the relevant question number at the op of the page you’ll be ok. This is understandable as the exams at this stage are so time pressured it is so easy to forget to fill in that box on the front page. Maybe if you get to review your exam experience you should mention it to ACCA and they may eventualkly eliminate the box from the front of the paper.

They should have made this exam a 4hr 15 mins paper, too much reading to get your head around to have time to answer all the questions!! What is up with the examiners tricks and confusing scenarios, isn’t part of corp governance about clarity?! you wouldn’t face these types of scenarios in real life, why does the examiner make it harder and more time pressured than it needs to be, doesn’t prepare you as an accountant any better. Acca should introduce a resist session that isnt 6 months later!

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.

<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

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

the paper was quite okay but very very time pressured. Even if you want to dish out all the knowledge in your head there is just too little time to actually organize answers and alas, wrist maybe too tired of writing after q1.

Q1- (i) SHIP
(ii) Evaluated the report. Didn’t do calculations because i might stray away and evaluate the company itself BUT discussed needed improvements to the report both financial and non financial. (reminded me of Metis, 6/12)
(iii) BSC- just apply
(iv) problems with using BS- Didn’t realise I used part of Mckinsey 7s! Used Style, Staff, System, Culture(Shared Values)
(v) Building Block Model- A bit of a mess because of time but pointed out Standards=Ownership, Achievable, fair & SMART
Rewards=Clear, linked to PM, Motivates, up to 30% may mean stepped rewards depends on how many targets are achieved.
Discussed the PM to be used on managers.

A quick glance at q4 made me realize it isn’t the best question for time constraint exam. I didn’t want to repeat my messed up p4 exam so I strictly had to followed my time allotment.
I did Q2 and Q3.

Q2- ABC and ABM + cost reduction & Quality using ABC. Quite confusing at first but i thought it would work out. Needed time to process all information, did this last and was very time constrained!
(a) ABC and ABM was very discursive and required little calculations.
Traditional Costing= 8.03/std dish, 108.03/specialised
ABC= 5.++/std dish, 106.++/specialised

(b) had to do in 5 minutes and just dished out whatever I can think of that maybe relevant. Continuous Improvement, Cost activities and drivers gives more information for cost reduction and improvements of processes etc.

Q3-
(a) 5 Forces was quite okay. I had to take a deep breath because the scenario itself leans towards Pestel and it can really distort answers. Not sure how the marking will be on the specific performance measure but I hope it isn’t half the marks. I was thinking “justify” may mean just a brief answer on why the specific performance measure should be used, so I focused on the 5 Forces. My PM was just all over the place, answering in 5minutes just to get some marks. I remember my new entrants was measure the market that hasn’t converted yet to hydrogen fuel as these are potential targets by new entrants.lol. could easily be applied to competition too.haha.

(b) Defining market- discussed alternate power technologies have different markets, could be hard to identify to which they belong and to compare with. some other difficulties can’t remember now.

(c) Risk of Venture Capitalist in Stokeness (?).. Discussed briefly different types of appetite as a start and criterion. Assessed VC as risk adverse because they invested in a 5year company with a good reputation. Discussed how it affects PM. Quite confused at this point.

Overall it was quite a torture on my wrist! It reminded me of P3 and a bit of F5. I’m just glad HRM and IT didn’t come out, didn’t study for that one. I’m fine with passing marks. This was way way better than P4 which was a total mess and information overload!