P3 Business Analysis According to BPP following are the topics that are expected to appear in P3 Business Analysis for June 2008 attempt. WARNING: The examiners deliberately try to avoid question spotting. Use the tips as areas to have a good look at, but remember that no-one knows what’s in the exam except the examiner. Your safest bet is to achieve good syllabus coverage in your revision, as the examiner aims to do in the exam. The areas that we would expect to see most regularly in the exam in the compulsory section A of the paper are:
l Strategic position – assessing and discussing the environment and capabilities of the organization including the mission and role of stakeholders, ethical stance and corporate governance (2007 Study text questions 1,2, 3 and 5) l Strategic choice – identifying and evaluating strategic options open to an organization making a distinction between the approach adopted by the corporate parent and that adopted by an Strategic Business Unit (2007 Study text question 6) l Strategic action – recommending courses of action to solve the business problems faced by the organization – usually based on the evaluation undertaken earlier in the question; the solutions will often (but not solely) be process improvements using software solutions and will always have a people aspect to them; change management will in these circumstances be a relevant point whether specifically asked for in the requirements or not. (2007 Study text questions 7, 8 and 9) l Quantitative evaluation – section A questions will include quantitative data – both financial and non-financial. You will be expected to make use of this data to support your answer and may even have the opportunity to calculate and comment upon relevant ratios (eg the December 2007 paper contained data on operational usage, an Income Statement and a Balance Sheet)
Other areas that we will expect to see, particularly in the optional part of the paper are:
l Quality – this is a potential source of competitive advantage and was tested in the pilot and December 2007 paper l Software packages – their role in process improvement is an area of interest to the examiner. l Project management – process improvement and many strategy initiatives are run as projects therefore this is a key area (2007 Study Text question 12) l Strategic HR - people are seen as key and so a section B question could focus on areas such as leadership, job design and staff development (2007 Study Text question 14)’ l Configuration and control – the way in which an organisation is organised, the control processes and the way in which it manages relationships is also an important area (2007 Study Text questions 7 and 13) l Customers and competitors – are key to an organization’s success (Study Text questions 3 and 6)
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