ACCA P3 Business Analysis June2014

Final Mock Exam Question+Answer

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Q2-Q4(choose 2 out of 3 Qs) 2

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Answers:

Q2

(a) 1, Process redesign There are too many questions for the amount of time the administrators have available which will lead to a delay and frustration. Employ more administrators to enter the data but this would be costly and does not address the issues with quality. Administrators are also not technical experts and therefore unable to check the accuracy of the material they have input which will lead to a decrease in quliaty of input. This can be improved by moving staff entering question in admin department into education department but this is not likely to happen because it will end up increasing costs by employing staff in education department. Currently it’s the education department who chooses the reviewer maybe from a Standard list. And this process can be computerised so that it will be quicker and cheaper for the computer to select the reviewer rather than manually. The questions can be summited before the reviewer is selected. Therefore all questions from a particular author are automatically sent to a specific reviewer. And this could reduce the efficiency of the proposal. However, the time taken to forward the proposed questions to reviewers would probably be reduced by this approach. The inclusion of ‘raise a reject notification’ on this swim lane seems a poor fit. It is essentially an administrative process (as it has no apparent financial implications) and so should be performed by eitheradministration or education. 2, Process re-engineering One was this could be achieved is to change the process so that the author enters the question directly into the computer system. This would both reduce the chances of mistakes (which should be picked up by the reviewer anyway should they occur) and transfer the input cost to the author, thereby removing the bottleneck and reducing administrative costs. The reviewer would then be responsible for informing the author of the acceptability of the question. Accepted responses would automatically raise a payment notification to be sent to the finance department, rejection would automatically generate a reject notification which is electronically sent to the author. There may be some staffing implications with this reengineered process, as there would be much less need for administrators and potentially also educational staff. The involvement of finance personnel is also significantly reduced. There would be redundancies as a result of implementing sucha process and therefore this solution is likely to be unpopular and difficult to implement.

(b) 1, Initial cost

A software package is likely to be cheaper than a bespoke build, given software is already built, so IAA can negotiate a better price the IAA will be contributing to the provider’s profit margin rather than covering the costs of building the software and also cost may be negotiated or implemented on a fee-for-use basis, allowing the IAA to tailor the price paid to the number of students sitting their examinations. 2, Speed of implementation The package is already available and is used by a significant amount of other organisations, therefore the IAA only have to set up the software and populate it with data. This process is much faster than building a bespoke system which would require specification, development and significant testing. This is a significant advantage as the threat from competitors means that IAA are keen to implement the new solution quickly. 3, Software quality The software has already been implemented at a number of significant examination boards. This suggests that the majority of faults will already have been found and corrected. This is a strong advantage over building a bespoke system which will not only require significant testing but, given the impossibility of finding all faults before implementation, is also likely to contain errors which could cause operational problems and costs. Reliability is essential for the IAA and so a tried and tested solution is important. 4, Try before you buy Unlike bespoke software, which can only be tried by the users at the end of the building process, the users get to experience the solution before buying it. This means that any gap between the requirements of the IAA and the software solution can be evaluated prior to purchase. 5, Predicted maintenance costs. Maintenance fees are agreed in advance as part of the negotiations involvedin putting package software in place. This will include further fault fixes as well as the implementation of new features that have been requested by the IAA and the wider user community.

Q3

Q4 (a)