Kaplan
　　Section A
　　Environmentalanalysis, people with financial analysis.
　　Section B
　　Projectmanagement.
　　Strategicaction.
　　Informationtechnology – pricing strategy.
　　BPP
　　Generaladvice
　　Ifwe look back at the 2014 P3 exams we can see that the examiner has againrequired students to have a very good grasp of the syllabus, both breadth anddepth, combined with an ability to apply that knowledge to the specificcircumstances of the scenario.
　　Inaddition it is clear that the examiner likes to keep students on their toes byincluding substantial “random” elements within questions that are from areasthat could be either be considered to be from the fringes of the syllabus orare based largely on knowledge carried forward from earlier papers. Forinstance in the June 2014 paper there was a 10 mark question on benefitsowners, maps and realisation and in December 2014 risk management and linearregression were included.
　　Itis therefore extremely dangerous for any student to focus on certain elementsof the syllabus at the expense of others. To stand the best chance of passingP3 students need to have a good understanding of the entire syllabus. This willenable them to choose the questions where they believe they will find it easierto pick up marks (for instance because it is easier to understand therequirements, or easier to structure an answer, or easier to pick up knowledgemarks) rather than having to choose questions because of the syllabus area.
　　Inaddition if students were to look at the exams in the past couple of years theywill see that all of the key areas of the syllabus have been examined over thepast four or five sittings which again shows the danger of question spotting orignoring areas.
　　Importantareas to cover for the June 2015 exam include:
　　Itcould be argued that the following areas, despite being key syllabus areas thathave been regularly examined, have not been examined significantly in the pastcouple of papers, and therefore may be a little more likely to surface (howeverremember that this is a very dangerous game to play if it distracts studentsfrom other syllabus areas):
　　– Strategy Lensesand approaches to strategy
　　– Mission, Cultureand Ethics
　　– Critical successfactors and KPIs
　　– Role of thecorporate parent including BCG matrix/Ashridge
　　– People,leadership, job design and staff development
　　Itis certainly worth a reminder that a number of new elements were brought intothe syllabus in 2014. It could be argued that the examiner may take theopportunity to test these specifically because they are relatively new andtherefore students should ensure that they are familiar with:
　　– IntegratedReporting
　　– Changemanagement frameworks (POPIT and the business change lifecycle) and
　　– OrganisationalConfiguration – new definitions: Boundary-less organisations, – Outsourcing vs.Offshoring, Hollow and Modular structures
　　Finallyit is worth pointing out first that the December 2014 paper saw a significantnumerical element (two out of four questions, including Q1) requiringinterpretation, calculation or both, and second, that the exam continues tofeature visual aspects such a process diagrams, organisational charts and datatables, thus practising interpretation of these from past questions isrecommended as we would fully expect both to continue in June this year.
　　LSBF
　　Strategicanalysis (external in particular).
　　Calculationand interpretation of basic financial ratios.
　　Usingthe SFA model to *uate strategic options.
　　Improvingbusiness processes using IT (and the IT controls required).
　　Makingstaff more efficient and effective.
　　TheBusiness Change lifecycle (including the POPIT approach).