The last chance to sit the CIMA case studies under the old syllabus is fast approaching – November 2019.
CIMA will, however, be making a re-sit under the 2015 syllabus available in February 2020, using the same pre-seen material as November 2019.
Going forward the same pre-seen material will be used over two exam windows – May and August, and November and February.
To this end CIMA revealed that there will also be a one off pre-seen used for the first case study exam under the new syllabus in February 2020.
From 2020 CIMA students will be able to sit their case study exams over a three-day window. These, says CIMA, are based on the most popular days students currently opt to sit. At the moment case study candidates can choose to sit over five days – from Tuesday to Saturday. This should also mean there will be less variants available.
hello and welcome to this video for the strategic case study Q&A session now apologies for the issues that we had earlier or we couldn't access the YouTube stream because a lot of you posted a lots of different questions for the I would record a video answering those questions and then just post it as a video online so with apologies for that but those of you did ask questions you will get the answer to those questions now.
Can start very top of the list of questions from Mohammed who asked that they have done or they're planning to do the five astrology mock exams including the mock exams on are those sufficient for getting the best score but again that's quite a difficult question to answer in theory that should be enough to pass but then it all depends on you if you are putting in the effort in your mock exams if you are taking on boards your feedback then it should be enough if you are not really putting the effort in then it will most likely not be sufficient it's really all comes down to you all that we as tutors as tuition providers could do is provide you the tools to help you pass the exam there's no golden way of just teaching you and you know if you as long as you just do this one thing then you'll pass easily without doing anything else about putting any other effort in it's it's ultimately about you and that is a great way to prepare yourself though because this exam is more about your ability to identify requirements the ability to plan effectively your ability to write effectively and to produce a solid well-rounded answer so as many mock exams you can take will put you in a better position it's not just the Australian mock exam so you should be open as well you should be looking at other tuition providers mock exams should be looking at the Pearson vu and the CIMA ones you can access for free online as well because of all of these will help you pass and it's about getting as much training in as much practicing as possible as that question here relates to paragraph senses how much to cover 15 mark tasks now the answers for 15 marks generally are about seven to eight paragraphs long and this is okay but this is pretty much every single word is absolutely imperative and also a lot of these humor answers don't necessarily fulfill some of the competency requirements given by CIMA.
What we suggest is actually that you write around a paragraph for every Marks may sound like a lot and it is a lot but that way you can be far more sure that you will be putting in the amount of effort the amount of content that is required to get the mark and we generally believe here at strategy that we try to over prepare our students almost because it's best way to repair than it is to be under prepared so we teach them to write as much as possible to write as comprehensively as possible it's even the best possible chance of passing a weapon here relating to a drivers cars should zoom continue investing in drivers technology or should they buy more car well they don't actually buy any cars themselves at the moment all the cars are leased and they are not even least through the companies well at least with driver problem car manufacturer car we tell our partnerships and they do have a system in place now or they have a plan in place to only allow drivers to use vehicles that are less than three years old and vehicles of that are hybrids or electric that's one of their plans at going forward so they are moving in a sense in a different direction with regards to cars and the cars that will be operated but there is no intention to actually have their own cars to buy cars and then lease them to their independent contractors or to purchase them and then give them to many contractors to use and that's potentially another one of the advantages of having independent contractors is they then have to provide their own vehicles and that's why we don't have you know a lot of assets because if we had to buy all these couple audio loss-making company we have to buy them all these vehicles ourselves tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of vehicles it would be incredibly expensive and it would be very difficult for the company to be a profitable technique given it's not even profitable the member without all these expenses and with regards to should they continue to invest in driver less cars because highly unlikely that that is the direction the company is going to take the pre seen repeatedly mentions about drivers cars repeatedly mentions about the investment that is putting in how much minutes putting in and the potential payoff of it and the actual CEO of the organization.
CIMA has specifically said that this is the future for the company this is the future for the industry this is a future for Transport in general so I find it quite unlikely that she's suddenly gonna turn around and say you know what we're not actually gonna do this anymore they're gonna go to some Oh a completely different direction because it very unlikely a particularly driver-less cars there's very much a need to invest now because this is going to be the future generally speaking is going to be the future we know the enjoyment the government actively likes to contribute them to invest into a disruptive technologies so particularly within jaymund it's going to be the future and as a result of that we need to be investing now we don't want to be late to the party so to speak because if we are late we are going to be behind there is going to be the chance that other organizations other companies will set the industry standard that is to say the system that they have in place is the one that everyone has got to use or there's perhaps a few that everyone can use is there's not going to be hundreds of different systems for driverless cars because they need to be of all of each other a car manufacturer is not going to want to make ten different versions of their new car to fit ten different driverless car systems so the the system that ultimately is picked not just in Jena but potentially globally is going to be the system to use and so it's very important to be in on the ground floor helping shape the future rather than having to react to the future another question here relating get to be venture capital.
Assume in the venture capitalists do not produce more funding and do not provide more funding what are the best sources to obtain a finance and it's a good question and there it's plenty of ways in which they could raise plants of raising further equity by selling to private investors rather than the venture capitalists there's the chance of selling a portion of the company to a larger business there is the potential of taking out debt financing there's no gearing of the organization at the moment although a bank may be I'm willing to lend vast quantities of money to a company that is currently a loss making the one lighting is particularly relevant for this presea based on the fact that uber and lyft the two companies that are most relevant to the two companies given in the pre seen have done it recently is the potential to raise additional XE fighting by launching on the stock market by undertaking an IPO and that's why I think is one of the most likely issues for this exam is because of that need for funding it's because of the fact that it's happened in the real world that so many actual companies that are relevant to this particular organization such as lyft have undertaken an IPO uber of undertaking an IPO so I think that is potentially the best way that they would have raised a substantial amount of finances substantial amount of funding so that would be my my key suggestion for raising signal in quantities of finance would be a to undertake an IPO but it says is it really necessary but real-life examples and mention the names of such as uber it's not completely necessary and Sina themselves have said that there are no direct marks for using industry examples however saying that the CIMA Examiner specifically said in their examiner reports that they would like people to use real-world examples.
Because it illustrates that you've done the research it illustrates that you are thinking strategically because you are applying it to real world situations rather than keeping it completely theoretical and hypothetical and it readers and wait to your points as well because if you presume while you're talking about IPO cinemas then we'll win to raise additional finance on the on the stock market other companies such as uber such a bliss to have being able to generate vast amounts of equity financing in this fashion and therefore suddenly adds a lot more weight a lot more depth to your answer because you are showing that there is precedent for it working and that is going to add value to the response is going to add weight to the response and make it sound like a much more practical solution or much more potential a potentially suitable and successful solution to the other financial funding problem and are we required to address a point to every point in real depth and make a point I have three to four sentences or can we make them shorter well generally we suggest that you would make your paragraphs around three sentences long so you would it introduce the point explain what apply the point and then evaluate the point so you talked about funding for example so joke about we're gonna need additional funding because we put these expensive of expensive expansion plans we could raise it by methods such as undertaking an IPO to raise equity financing such as companies like uber this will also add prestige to the organization it will also add security to the organization and that would be more your evaluation points more you explain me the kind of advantages of doing it the the potential knock-on impact of doing it for the organization which is how you as his fusion think you don't think in the here-and-now necessarily or exclusively you don't just think about what it's gonna have the short-term reactions or the short-term impacts of your decisions you think of the long-term as well now Jenny asks about what other strategic aims of a zoom and they're looking to driverless technology and yes they are looking into drivers technology but for strategic end you think more about the the mission of the organization the mission of the organization is to connect people is to bring people together to improve the safety and security of Transport so everything that you are suggesting everything that they are doing etc should be linked ultimately to those misstatements and to those goals that were mentioned in the pre-seen.
so if it doesn't help connect people if it doesn't help bring people together more saviors and rapid transport to provide transport more safely etc then it arguably isn't going to be something that the company should be doing so early as well mentioned about driving their own castle producing their own cars and just purchasing vehicles now having their own vehicles is not going to help them provide safe and secure traffic or so there's any better than the system they can be how so is it potentially not something they should be doing particularly given that it's going to cost so many tens if not hundreds of millions of J dollars to do and I don't think they potentially should be doing that so the mystery games are ultimately to do with connecting people so actually if you think about alternatives that they could be doing they potentially not just be looking at the transport market so anything that connects people as well different technologies that connect people have apps smartphones etc are there any other more social media type apps that they could be looking at creating that will help connect people together that's almost more where they would be going in terms of being connecting company now potentially isn't related to transport but they could there are plenty of other sort social media things that could be related to transport things like TripAdvisor things like booking comm all these sorts of apps which are quite social in their interaction above a lot of talking to people who are arranging to meet with other people etc.
It's again it's related to travel but it's a different kind of travel than what is currently being on offer but what you always need to suggest when you are talking about strategic games is it's very easy to think of the things that the organization currently isn't doing but also we need to think about what the organization company is doing so a strategic aim your first strategic game if you are thinking you know what suggestions you're gonna make for the company is to always keep what they are doing well and keep doing it well look at what they are doing well why they are giving you well and take those lessons and use it for other areas of the organization they should never compromise on what they are currently doing well and particularly if you are given a suggestion which ultimately looks at potentially going against what they can't be doing well then you should be really sure to say we shouldn't be doing this because it goes against what we are currently doing what makes the business the business just states that as the three marks I've written already managed to get one integration mark out of the 27 available now individual marks are quite tricky to say exactly what should be doing to get them because they are quite arbitrary they are White's subjective in their application whether a novel is going to give you the model one way that I would look at integration Marx's it's ultimately the quality of your script as a whole so it's not looking the quality of your content in your individual paragraphs it's looking for quality of it as a whole does it link together nicely do the two sections linked together nice to do does your work flow nicely do you link the various different parts of the syllabus together and a good way of using of doing that is by looking at the SAF model the SAF model is good for integration marks because it looks at all different areas of the syllabus he looks at the suitability with your strategy because your acceptability looks at your stakeholders it looks at the risk is it in appropriate and acceptable level of risk that's your PD and looks at your funding your resources your feasibility of the project do you need to hire more staff again a stakeholder thing do you need to raise additional finance a an apt topic and therefore it's linking all the different bits of the syllabus together effectively and that is what is going to get your integration marks so linking the syllabus together applying the syllabus effectively and making sure the quality and the flow of your script as a whole is good are the ways in which you can achieve those integration marks how the syllabus change effect these strategic case study just in case you are not successful well hopefully you will be successful but these strategic case studies syllabus is not changing until February 2020 .
it's not like the objective test which will be being set under the new syllabus as early as November it's not until the February 2020 exam so the November 2009 exam will still be sat on the existing syllabus also with regards to the syllabus change very little is actually changing with regards to what you will actually be expected to do the way it is being marked that's going to be changed and we're going have some clarity from CIMA over the next month or so with regards to that and they're moving away from these core competencies to the core activities and the core activities are going to be less focused on specific topics and they're going to be more about the actual quality of what you are writing so questions could have a range of core activities in them rather than it being a case of this question is a technical question this question is a people question so from a student's perspective I actually think it's going to be a lot better because it's going to be judging your scripts far more holistically rather than very specific requirements and that's probably a lot of reasons.
Why students fail because they have potentially not made even though they've been very good overall they've not made specific met specifics or checklist requirements for what they have achieved but they're doing away with that they're also doing away with a minimum competency requirements or core activity required since it will now be so in the past you could have passed overall but you could have failed warned now of your four competencies you know you passed this when you pass this when you passes when you felt this one and you passed overall because you didn't meet the minimum competency requirements here you failed they're doing away with that as well so if you meet the past Marco rule you will pass regardless of how well you perform in those core activities so if you pass this one pass this one pass this one fail this one you'll still pass overall if you've got the minimum requirements overall so with the right classification of drivers do we classify them as employees do we classify them as independent contractors or there's these pre seen says that they are independent contractors and there will potentially be debates about this in the exam because they're in more in a legal sense you can't just call someone independent contractor if you then treat them as an employee the law will say that you are treating them as employees but only they are treating them as employees in this case because they are not getting the kind of benefits they are not expected to work at particular times etc they are well within their rights to choose exactly when and when they are and aren't going to work so I do think they are independent contractors the issue is is whether it's fair to employ independent contractors particularly if there are issues that the company is charging too much as price gouging and therefore people I'm using zoom services the independent contractors aren't getting jobs they're not getting paid because there's no work available because of actions taken by the organization.
I do expect there to be potential issues around this perhaps people wanting to be registered as employees then of course there might be issues over whether they have to use their own vehicles whether you can ask employees use their own vehicle however they're going to have to work on the legalities of that situation there will be you can give them the right to their own vehicle Berlin might have to pay them for the right to use their vehicle etc question from Thomas here on integrated reporting and how much they are going to be expected to know about this and the financial reporting standards etc now with regards to the case study is going to be very little on financial reporting standards and things like this is tested F 1 and F 2 level it's not going to be a big part of the strategic case study and you're not going directly testing it for integrated reporting they already do have some of their been your CSR reports and things of that which might be potentially linked into that is in do they have to link that with their financial statements and things like that but it's it's quite a small companies over the operating in one area at the moment so it could be quite it'll be quite unlikely for there to be too much on that at this point in time obviously might be giving more information in the unseen which may change that and with IT and information strategy risks do I think this will be a big issue will things come up on it I do think that it could be quite a big issue it was mentioned in these being the risk report given to us in the the pre seen with the tech companies is always going to be an issue at the moment they get a lot of their software from third parties that could be a potential risk if those focus of our business they start charging too much if they update their software and it's not compatible with the other software's that we use in creating our apps that could be an issue for lists what I would suggest doing is looking at berm up from very much the Vitara more pitama is a very good way to analyze risks because it gives you the options to solve those risks.
I think of transfer except the juice avoid etc now obviously if it's a fundamental part of our app we can't avoid it because we need it at the same time if it's gonna potentially have a massive impact on a business don't just accept that this so could we transform or of our software to an outsourcer specializes in managing those software if you go through those different options and you analyze which ones wouldn't wouldn't work that is a very good way of fleshing have you asked which is what you would also asked here is how we add weight to our answer and also if investment present comes up is it appropriate to use the SAF model now those of you listen to me speak before in my master classes except for up it is a very appropriate model for many many things in my favorite models to suggest to use just because it does cover everything vestment appraised it was a perfect time to use it strategy does the end result type our strategy no matter how profitable is is this going to help us connect people is going to help us provide safer team and transport if it isn't then potentially it's not what we should be doing is acceptable to our stakeholders is it going to have an appropriate level of risk can we fund it is it going to be feasible in terms of the resources that we have in fact it would be a perfect model to so I wouldn't actually suggest any other model other than the saf model well there are other models to use but the SAF model is the most appropriate model to use so I wouldn't suggest a better model than that Hanna is asking you about hedge accounting hedge accounting is very unlikely to come up at the moment because it until they start doing anything aboard there is going to be absolutely no neat mean to the hedge accounting in the first place if they do decide to trade abroad set up overseas is that have been it becomes an issue but because they would meet you would need to be considering that in the first place before it would come up.
I think it's gonna be more of an add-on question to a potential opportunity to start trading abroad rather than there being a whole question about it now for example in previous pre seen it was a whole section the pre seen about hedge accounting and they did a lot of business overseas so in that instance hedge accounting is a likely issue in hedge accounting you did to come up but it's not a particularly likely issue for this particular precinct because at the moment there is no they would have to change what they are currently doing for hedge hat accounting to even become an issue so you're already putting in potential hypothetical sea situations in place before it even becomes slightly relevant so I don't think it's going to be a huge issue and someone else actually has already answered your question there about it not actually been relevant until it has be altered they start trading abroad because they're about recording but unfortunately we weren't able to record the actual live class that's why I've been recording this video for you now of course when you see it of course it will be already relevant it will be up online yes we could get a question about drivers wanting to be known as employees there are obviously benefits to them for for this as in they get employee protection they get guaranteed of much county wage of other with potential issues that they might be put on zero hour contracts or things like that and that could be an issue for them as well the appropriate way to deal with this is they do strike as you suggested here is that it's very easy for them to get other drivers and they're hiring lots of new drivers and all these things independent contractors at the moment so unless the your on mass it might be quite difficult for them to actually yet offer for the the independent contractors to have linked in the art however the public would generally be on the the independent contractors side to be on the drivers side because it's always the case when you've got a massive corporation is there's already given these people you know a tough trip or tough no deal in terms of what they are offering them or they're giving them.
I'm guaranteeing them wage the UK it's been all this stuff about zero hours contracts etc so the appropriate way to handle it would be to consider the views of all stakeholders to consider both parties to try and get them on a negotiating table and then see where that takes us now can't suggest exactly what they should be doing yet because we have no idea it's a hypothetical situation we don't know what if they are striking ball of their threatening yet we don't know what they're asking for the moment these are all questions that would need to be answered in the unseen but always a starting point with regards to anything like that with like negotiations etc is to start from a point of collaboration and negotiation rather than trying to be dismissive about it can we say that all the venture capitalists or the shares it'd be very difficult to say that I don't think that would be the case at the moment they the owners of the company would definitely still have a significant portion of the shares venture capitalists will have a majority of the shares I think they'll probably have their 50 to 60 percent of the shares potentially more but they won't own all 100% of it because if they did it would be unlikely would be necessary the owners would still be having as much power as they can because the the venture capital to to put other people in place although venture capitals jhumri do sit back a bit and it doesn't seem like they're getting too involved in the running of the organization you also don't know how many venture capitalists there are now it could be that it was almost on their nose on a crowdfunding type thing for venture capitalists and they've got hundreds and hundreds of venture capitalist firms who have all invested a very small amount of money in each or it could be that there's a couple who have invested hundreds of millions of J dollars in each but it definitely will it more than like Aniston to be shareholdings by you the owners of the company.
How do you know how much money is being generated from the the bike-sharing versus the ride hailing was the ride-sharing and yes that would be a good thing to know that wasn't given to us in the pre scene but if we are given it the wrong thing that would be good about it which you could determine the profitability of each particular section you could determine whether or not the bike sharing was vastly more profitable than that the right paving service and then you could take appropriate actions if if bike sharing is so much more profitable then perhaps we need to focus more on building the right of a bike sharing part of the business should soon give up three shares to managers that's potentially a way of offering bonuses etc it would be difficult to do right now because the companies I've received are profitable and so that you could argue if the shares aren't really worth too much and it could be very difficult for them to to make anything of the shares because the the company is a private company at the moment so it's not like they are a tradable commodity to the same extent a question about a data breach happening so if a data breach had happened it measure be stolen by hackers it should they make that public yes they should because it's convenient ethical to not release the information and uber if you're asking about interests examples did the same thing they had a lot of information stolen including confidential customer information credit card information etc and they didn't publish it they didn't release it and I really found out a long time at later and that actually had followers of an impact on the bleach itself so they should always mention it they should always let people know and let them know to take appropriate action if need be it will annoy the public yes but it's half the damage that it would be if you let it go on how it made betas be used well betas may be used particularly if the company is trying to launch on the stock market and to come up an appropriate price for the organization as a private company.
There is no direct price for the company yet so they use industry betas to form an appropriate price of appropriate learning based and things like that method of analyzing the wealth and worth of the organization so looking at the industry basis of other transport network companies as how they may be used in the exam sounds asking how do you make sure that the you fulfill the competency requirements I didn't say the companies were important in terms of you get to meet a certain amount but there is no different way to answer a ten question business question people question ease your question it's all the same don't waste your time trying to identify which question is in which competence so I wouldn't bother doing that just answer the question I was just to put bow your head answer the question asked and you'll be fine you'll past this exam question about all committees yes there was no real mention about the audit committees or whether there was an audit committee if they do list on something they'll have to have an audit committee and so that would be potentially something I would suggest if you were talking about how they can improve their internal auditing how it improve their internal risk management because the job of the audit committee to install that throughout the organization so just looking through final questions I don't see any more on the on the youtube list so I'll bring this video to a close again sorry for the issues we had earlier with either live chats it just wasn't working for us here we were frantically trying and restarting it and creating new ones and it just was not working YouTube just was not working for the particular at the particular time for it so again really sorry about that I know you were giving up half an hour of your time for it's and we sorry didn't want that to happen but I have the corner of video now hopefully asking answering all the questions that you had posted into that chat group so thank you very much for for watching this video and to get in touch if you have any other questions and I wish you the best of luck in at your exam next week.
CIMA case study exams checklist - Key things to know
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I'm going to talk to about all the things you need to do in order to pass the exam there's a whole sets of things it's like your checklist of items you can use that checklist in various ways you can use it to make sure you've covered all the important steps that it takes as part of your own self revision if you're preparing alone if you're going on a course you can make sure that the course you're about to buy has got all these key elements as part of it because it's what makes a great course as to whether they've got these things okay and I hope your you'll allow me this as well as what I'm gonna do is explain all these things to you and also then say well this is how we deal with it .
In our course as part of you know consideration of whether that might be something that is is right for you and of course we have our course which has got all these elements but what we also do is you can also buy all the things I'm about to describe individually you could just buy certain elements of it particular if you're on a tight budget but ideally what you're going to do is one way or the other through whatever means you're going to cover all of these things on the checklist I'm about to give you as part of your studies.
Let's start with exam technique then so as part of this video series I've been showing you the exam technique that I use to help people to pass the exams what I learned when I got my markup from what was it 45 to 69 on the business strategy exam that's what I've been teaching ever since has made an enormous difference to people passing the exam so the first thing is is make sure you know what the exam technique leak is on our course I do a whole set of videos hours of videos and we've got a study text that gives exercises and gives a lot more detail now I've started us off in this video series here with what it takes as an technique-wise lots of great things to apply but I've got hours of that stuff showing you and giving exercises helping you on exam technique and that is as important as anything else if not the most important thing so.
what's the next thing you need to do you need to analyze the case study in detail as you got through the levels it becomes more important as this is really really important that you know the case study you know the industry that is operating it within you are because that strategic you are acting like a director but you are going to advise the company on the businesses strategy and so you need to know the industry to say well this is what's happening out there in the industry and therefore this is what it means for us you need to understand what industry competitors are doing so you can go our Boeing if it was Airlines Boeing of just on this we should be following suit well they've done it but they failed we better not do that either you need to really understand the strategic you know the case study strategic all the e3 strategy models you need to understand those because that's what makes your answer really good strategy of management you still need to know it quite well operational you need to know reasonably well the operational exam is more theoretically based with some context so the relate always needs to be there.
You've relate as much as you can but you relate to the case study less operational because there's more Theory in there by the time you get to strategic you have to really know everything so it's still very useful operational another thing that's very useful from industry analysis is being able to use real-life industry examples they get credit or all levels even more useful a strategic quite useful at management but if you can use them operation it will get you credit if there's something related to your your area it's a little bit harder because it's more operational as lower level it's you probably won't have done all the detailed research at that level but still all levels knowing the industry and really knowing the case study absolutely vital ok so you can do your own research for the industry you can do your own analysis of the case study if you were going to use our material we have a strategic analysis where we understand this strategy of all of the companies we have an industry analysis hundred page analysis of the industry with supporting videos.
I should say the strategic analysis has got supporting videos as well that helps you understand the industry and goes through specific industry examples to specific ones you can use so that we're tailoring them to what we thinks likely to be useful in the exam we do our top ten industry list I top 10 most likely issues list so we use our knowledge of the previous cases and look at that case to go okay first you could be pretty accurate from the case to see what is the exam and they're getting either putting Clues in basically all the way through I'm telling you this because I'm going to write a question on that and I'm telling you this because I'm going to write a question on this okay so we go through using that knowledge to say okay these are the most likely questions and normally that's pretty accurate those predictions across the five variants are ten top ten issues most of them come up somewhere when one of those variants because you can do it yourself because you can go through the case then you can go why are they telling me that okay that's probably because that's going to be a question and you can do that he'll stop it helps when you've seen lots and lots of course so come up with that the long short of it is you need to understand the case study we've got about six seven hours of video on the case study with masses of support hundreds of pages of supporting documents for you analyzing that case study next thing you need to be good at probably the most important thing is practicing doing exams it's really actually practicing the stuff in my previous videos practicing your exam technique practicing working quickly you can do that looking at past exams you can also do that by looking at pre-prepared questions.
we have for management level and operation and strategic level we have competency packs with while they'll be across the for competency about 40 different practice questions that you can do the based on past exam questions in a kind of short half-hour practice you can go okay I've got only got half an hour practice something on the business competency and I can practice something on the technical competency based on past exams so you could practice those or you can practice past exams okay but most important is your practicing the things that are coming up in your case this is where mock exams come in your answering based on your scenario based on your business strategy analysis as important as doing the mock is getting feedback and if you were just gonna buy one thing you know because your budget was limited I would say get a mock a couple of mocks and get feedback on that having someone that is marked hundreds of mocks actually go through your script and saying you're making this mistake in this mistake you're doing this kind of thing right and this kind of thing right next time around do this more do this less we have a six to seven page a long effect checklist that we go through getting all our markers yeah they're doing this they're doing this that they're not doing that we're not doing that they give you guidance specifically on that but they also in addition to that is they will go through each paragraph that program is worth a mock that one's not and it's not because of this don't do that again so it's really advising you on your exam technique and how to approach our reserves better it's incredibly useful if you've attempted past cases and failed and you haven't have feedback that's the thing you should have two or three lots of feedback and guidance from someone so it doesn't have to be from us find it from someone that will will give you that feedback okay because it's so so important but that's all included as part of our our courses of the mocks and the feedback home knows
what's the most important question that if you're going to prepare for one thing for your exam one topic that comes up in at least half of all variants across all three levels that topic is ethics ethics is something that goes throughout the CIMA case studies it's vital for CIMA that they're producing qualified accountants who produce superb and sorry who are completely ethical in the way they operate and so they will ingrain that in you all the way through with questions throughout all the levels on ethics yet my experience of what is it now fifteen years of teaching CIMA case study is that people are not very good at answering ethics questions because they don't know why something is ethical they know something is unethical but they can't explain why well they're afraid to explain why we're treating a member of staff unfairly okay that's unethical why is it unethical and what we've got is an ethics we have an ethics pack where she's got lots of ethics practice questions but also it's my video and guidance on how you get to the heart of why that's unethical and how you write on also that really gets in there you don't just goes we're treating them fairly that's unethical we shouldn't do that we should do this instead the problem is that that's a ten mark question it's not going to get you ten marks so why is that one fair isn't this a strategy basically theories of ethics that you can go through we're saying this unethical because of this element of the theory and this element theory in this element of the theory and so you've got like a structured approach to dealing with ethics questions so the ethics pack really you know vital was it's the most important question that comes up and again whatever you do go through past exam papers or whatever you do and practice ethics questions or all levels because they are so important people really struggle to write them and of course
If you come on of course you get our support we've got online forums you can ask those questions whenever you want about think about anything actually also the your marker will work with you very very closely they'll give you an analysis but also they'll aren't if you email them back they will answer questions based on what you're doing well I'm not so well so you've got our expert tutors plus your marker or supporting you on different elements and so you know that's absolutely vital that we're there for you then you've got someone that book again you can do that yourself go onto online forums and Facebook groups some and and asked people on their so you can get that in other ways as well but they're nice to get it all incorporated in one course so of course is all-encompassing is everything that I've learned over the years that it takes to pass there's an we've incorporated all those things in into that into those courses so my hope is that your you'll come on one of our courses or least by some of our individual materials or that you can use this as the checklist for for making sure you're doing all these things as part of your tuition provider or as part of what you buy in order to help you to pass or the way you prepare but you know what in the end passing the exams and doing all these things to pass.
I think we have to think about what's the point of it all you will pass all the exams and spend three is doing it and it's I know it's incredibly tough I've done it myself and you're working and you're taking exams in your spare time and you're doing it I look probably an exam level higher this higher than degree love it's harder than anything you've done in the past all in your spare time in your weekends and a few courses that you do and why what's all about but it is about pride I've done it I'm a qualified accountant but you're not a lot of it is about what it means for you in your life and I know for me once I got qualified that it's given me the security to know I can always get a well-paid job as an accountant and I mean I've gone into teaching rather than actually doing but it's given me the assurance that I've always been able to do it and actually if teaching wasn't there then I'd always be able to go back and be in accountant and because you've got that qualification is giving me that security and it's given me the the the income that comes through being qualified this enabled a comfortable life for my family and me and and and had that and ultimately you know there's those benefits from going through passing of pride and doing something worthwhile and creating a life for yourself that is hopefully a good life I've loved being a qualified accountant there are many people that would say that you know because I love teaching.
I found that you know that they're teaching it for me was was an absolute joy in supporting people and guiding people you know and people go on to become finance directors or financial controllers where they're not just doing the numbers they're analyzing the numbers they're analyzed in the business and it's something that they absolutely love to do so people love doing the numbers as well of course you know but that's of course one of the benefits of getting qualified and moving up through the structure and there's loads of other opportunities I've got friends who are in corporate finance or doing acquisitions some that are just pure occurrences people are qualified with some people in consulting so there's all these different opportunities once you've actually got qualified and so you know ultimately it's about that you know it's not just about getting a good mark on a mark or passing one is an it's about passing all of these and what it does for you and I hope that through this video series I've been able to help guide you and what it takes to pass a case study exam.
I also hope that you know you'll be able to you'll come on some of our courses to support you through that but whatever I wish you the best of luck through your studies and once you're qualified through your life that the whole thing is is something that really works for you and yeah and I'll just say you know particularly for any upcoming exams you have just really you know just the best of luck
