How did you get on in P3?

I thought Q1 was fair- but I spent to long planning

dun knw how to do q1 (a) 5 forces based on a short paragraph. My answers for 5 forces very short. then never use financial data. I do question 1-3.

....sure I just spent so long absorbing/planning all the info in q1, it took me a long time to write:

for q1 a) I used 5 forces plus a bit of PEST - what was weird was the competitors where the same as the suppliers whom in turn were reliant on the Govenment for subsequent licencing in 2020

for the briefing notes on the non closure of the offices; I found that tough because it some ways closure (at least in some branches, of the 416, could well have been the best thing).

for the reward scheme;I rambled a bit - I just discussed the benefit of doing a review on sales targets of branches (evidence indicated in the exit meeting for an ex branched manager, who said hey were unrealstic); the possible need to review the basis of performance awards to mitigate the pressuer to sell high margin items which compromises staff integrity and company ethos/mission ; a review of the basic pay/ performance pay in relation to standard of living requirements, while maintaining enough motivational sweetners to maintain proactive selling........ but I missed off the suggestion to move branches into cities (dont know if this would have been plausible).....

I felt my answers to qu2 where dodgy - went on the basis of 'dont outsource your core competence'/guesswork. The advantages bit as ok.Qu 3 I didnt manage to complete - literally started writing part b when exam ended!......

Oh gosh, I'm totally exhausted

I dont think I've passed but I'm glad its over for the moment........ man am I glad......

oh my it was tough for me... I too used 5 forces/pestel but thought it wasn't enought to get a detailed answer and rambled... and then panicked and did pretty poor on the other questions too..

I'm just glad its all over with for now... with all the hope in the world I'd love to have passed, but I seriously don't think I've done enought for p3 to do it... In fact i'm pretty embarrassed about how poorly I answered the questioned!!!

Roll on august 18th so I can start again and get these exams finished in december.

Good luck for then folks xxx

ya I can tell you the paper was totally killing interms of the overloading of information. Case study Q#1 was too long & took me 20 minutues to just go once & still didnt get 50% out of it.

Competitive environ analysis - applied Pestel/5 forces but all in very brief don know what else to write as it only wanted for the retails division only. marks allocated were 20

then there were change to business idea thing which was ok as per ethical terms but not profitable to org. again didnt know how to tacke this position.

Briefing notes ok will get format marks..

Q3- 6I, & 7P marketing
Q4- Change kaleidoscope model for contextual features + Change matrix for nature,scope of change strategy.

My Q3/4 were some what ok but worried about Q1

Overall 3 case studies struggled to finish in 3 hrs.

I suggest having 1 hour reading time instead of 15 minutes for this paper only becoz of 3 case studies.

this time pressure paper had given hard time I made points but were not structured at all & all becoz of lack of time to do other case studies...thing is that you have to read the whole story before putting pen on paper.

I agree entirely - in some ways it doesn't matter how much you've studied, its about keeping it together and quickly discerning the salient info from the noise, extremely quickly....Its incredibly difficult.....and is compounded with problem with undestandable nervousness

15 minutes is poultry and an hour is justifiable particularly when the emphasis typically involves producing a report suitable for a director........

I need more time to really digest information and put foward thoroughly cogent arguments

Anyway, I guess there is no point worrying about it for just now....

Good luck to everyone for August....


.

didn't managed to finish the whole paper too. btw, do they do moderation??

Well, I only started revising after my p2 exam, so I supposed not much should be expected

1a
Used 5 forces, but it was 20 marks! wasn't sure what should have been added as it was about the "competitive" environment, and PESTEL didn't seem to fit, although I should have wrote some on the political/legal/tech factors on the industry, although i did cover some under 5 forces.

1b
Used BCG and made up lots of stuff with bad organisation. After the paper, I realised that since it was about "divesting" as an option, should have used JSW's suitability, acceptability and feasibility, and talk about how it will not be acceptable to stakeholders etc, for better organisation. Oh well, there goes my 3 professional marks.

1c
was really weird.. wasn't sure what to write so made up everything
-business idea, i thought it had to do with organisational purpose, and wrote about the influences (stakeholders, ethics, culture, cg), and made some suggestions
-rewards systems, i used bratton's model to clarify the strategic perspective, rewards options, competitiveness, but not sure whether what I did was correct

2a used harmon's process-strat matrix yay
2b thought it was easy, but when I was onto the last point, I realised that it said "analyse" the advantages, so I had to go back and squeeze in some negative effects of the advantages as well.

3a made up nonsense with the 6i characteristics
3b made up more nonsense with the 7Ps of marketing.
I didn't have time to analyse the case study properly, so scanned through it...
[/b]

whats moderation..??

I felt Q1 didn't lend itself to PEST analysis and felt the term competitive environment could lend itself to a SWOT. Does anyone else agree - Pleeeeeaaaasseeee?!!!

question said appropriate model or models for competitive analysis,

therefore i used 4 models

PESTEL
5 FORCES
SWOT - for opportunities & threats only.
LIFECYCLE MODEL

hoping anyone will hit the target...

Phew was beginning to think i'd really messed up. I used 5 forces but only as a brief mention after the SWOT analysis, was beginning to regret not using PEST but you've eased my concerns!

moderation as in they do marks adjustments to maintain the passing rate at a percentage.