TARC ACCA 2005

tips june 2005 paper 3.4 Business Information Management

source:- BPP

Section A
The examiner tends to provide fairly lengthy case studies, which provide information about the business strategy, the IT history to date and the current situation. As you are likely to be dealing with an organisation that needs to make decisions about its IT systems and strategies, questions are often based on strategic models and approaches from the syllabus.
Questions in the June 2005 exam could ask you to analyse an organisation's current position regarding its IT, perhaps using a model such as Porter's value chain (Q11). In order to tackle this type of question, you need to be able to recognise the relevant business strategy in order to make appropriate IT suggestions. Questions 51 and 52 are excellent ones to practice on this.
A key area that all students must focus on is how to develop a business case for Information Technology. IT facilitates business decisions, and the examiner is likely to ask you to analyse the key business issues. A key model to understand and use is ‘Where We Are, Where We Want to Be, Going to Get There’, and it would be useful to review the first BIM exam paper set.

There could also be questions asking you to improve a project or development that is
experiencing problems (Q26, Q28)
Another key to review would be the human and social issues relating to IT development, and the syllabus lists several change management theories, such as Lewin, which have yet to be examined.
Exam technique is extremely important in this paper, so working through as many case
studies as possible is to be advised. Questions 64-66 are the questions from the examiner's pilot paper.

Section B
Section B questions could come from anywhere in the syllabus, and there are often questions which focus on one particular theory. The examiner also uses these questions to get candidates to bring in 'real-life' examples, to illustrate theories, so be sure to have at your fingertips some examples which you can use, either from your own experience, or perhaps from other exam scenarios and questions which you have used. There is also usually one question with a mini-scenario that can be a good one to choose, as you have a context to work with. The examiner also uses section B to test knowledge about specific types of technology.
Key theories that need to be understood are those of Nolan, Parsons, Porter, Earl and
Zuboff, and reviewing past BIM papers can be extremely helpful to see the style of questions on these areas.
Key areas to cover in depth are as follows:
• E-commerce is an area that usually appears on information papers ((Q8)
• The human impact of IT has not yet been examined extensively (Q31 &32)
• Knowledge management is an area that may be prominent in future exams (Q5)

Source: FTC UK
• Strategy –application of an IS/IT/IM strategy in the context of a scenario
• Porters 3 generic strategies in relation to the development of e-commerce systems or the Internet
• Knowledge management – problems of knowledge sharing and solutions within a business context – perhaps relating to knowledge and data workers
• Data warehousing and data mining – problems of amalgamating company wide databases to facilitate data sharing
• Value chain – identification of IS to support the value chain along with an explanation of its importance to the development of business strategy
• Legacy systems and risk – based around the article in the March Student Accountant - could be linked to the decision to outsource the development to reduce the risk.
• Lewins model and managing change – the application of the model and how problems can be reduced in relation to policies which address behaviour.
• PEST analysis – application of information within a scenario to determine the internal and external issues affecting the business – further development within
section b) of the question to improve the current position.
• Reasons for the development of strategy and alignment issues – core topic area – yet to examine the reasons for the development of an IS strategy – alignment issues could be linked to one of the above models g value chain
• Globalisation
• Eis
• ssm


Source: FTC S'pore
Lecturer - Mr Alex Watt
• Linking IS/IT strategy to business strategy (Note: this is the core topic of the syllabus)
• Web based technology – internets, extranets, intranets
• Applying IS/IT for competitive advantage – five forces, value chain and generic strategy models
• PEST
• Outsourcing
• Data warehousing and data mining
• Lewin’s model for change management
• Legacy systems
• Project risk

Health Warning! The examiners deliberately try to avoid question spotting. Just because a question featured last time, doesn’t mean it won’t feature this time. Use the tips as areas to have a good look at, but remember that no one knows what is in the exam, apart from the examiner. Your safest bet is to achieve good syllabus coverage in your revision, as the examiner aims to do in the exam.

Disclaimer : All the above are reproduced materials,all the copyright remained to the original sources and i shall not take any responsibility towards the accuracy and reliance on the tips.

posted by Unknown @ 12:07 AM