ACCA对于会计职业生涯有帮助吗？

正确答案：
(ii) Damian should not agree to the sales director’s suggestion. The salesmen will each make a significant annual income
tax saving under the proposal, whereas the company will also be offset (at least partly) by the reduction in the dealer’s
bulk discount. Further, 100% first year allowance tax incentive for low emission cars is not guaranteed beyond 31 March
2008, and it is unlikely that any change in policy with regards to the provision of additional accessories will, once
implemented, be easily reversible.

正确答案：
(c) Activity-based management (ABM) is a method of identifying and evaluating activities that a business performs using
activity-based costing to carry out a value chain analysis or a re-engineering initiative to improve strategic and operational
decisions in an organisation. Activity-based costing establishes relationships between overhead costs and activities so that
overhead costs can be more precisely allocated to products, services, or customer segments. Activity-based management
focuses on managing activities to reduce costs and improve customer value.
Kaplan and Cooper (1998) divide ABM into operational ABM and strategic ABM:
Operational ABM is about ‘doing things right’, using ABC information to improve efficiency. Those activities which add value
to the product can be identified and improved. Activities that don’t add value are the ones that need to be reduced to cut costs
without reducing product value.
Strategic ABM is about ‘doing the right things’, using ABC information to decide which products to develop and which
activities to use. This can also be used for customer profitability analysis, identifying which customers are the most profitable
and focusing on them more.
A risk with ABM is that some activities have an implicit value, not necessarily reflected in a financial value added to any
product. For instance a particularly pleasant workplace can help attract and retain the best staff, but may not be identified as
adding value in operational ABM. A customer that represents a loss based on committed activities, but that opens up leads
in a new market, may be identified as a low value customer by a strategic ABM process.
ABM can give middle managers an understanding of costs to other teams to help them make decisions that benefit the whole
organisation, not just their activities’ bottom line.

正确答案：
(b) Perfect Shopper currently has a relatively short upstream supply chain. They are bulk purchasers from established suppliers
of branded goods. Their main strength at the moment is to offer these branded goods at discounted prices to neighbourhood
shops that would normally have to pay premium prices for these goods.
In the upstream supply chain, the issue of branding is a significant one. At present, Perfect Shopper only provides branded
goods from established names to its customers. As far as the suppliers are concerned, Perfect Shopper is the customer and
the company’s regional warehouses are supplied as if they were the warehouses of conventional supermarkets. Perfect
Shopper might look at the following restructuring opportunities within this context:
– Examining the arrangements for the delivery of products from suppliers to the regional warehouses. At present this is in
the hands of the suppliers or contractors appointed by suppliers. It appears that when Perfect Shopper was established
it decided not to contract its own distribution. This must now be open to review. It is likely that competitors have
established contractual arrangements with logistics companies to collect products from suppliers. Perfect Shopper must
examine this, accompanied by an investigation into downstream distribution. A significant distribution contract would
probably include the branding of lorries and vans and this would provide an opportunity to increase brand visibility and
so tackle this issue at the same time.
– Contracting the supply and distribution of goods also offers other opportunities. Many integrated logistics contractors also
supply storage and warehousing solutions and it would be useful for Perfect Shopper to evaluate the costs of these.
Essentially, distribution, warehousing and packaging could be outsourced to an integrated logistics company and Perfect
Shopper could re-position itself as a primarily sales and marketing operation.
– Finally, Perfect Shopper must review how it communicates orders and ordering requirements with its suppliers. Their
reliance on supplier deliveries suggests that the relationship is a relatively straightforward one. There may be
opportunities for sharing information and allowing suppliers access to forecasted demand. There are many examples
where organisations have allowed suppliers access to their information to reduce costs and to improve the efficiency of
the supply chain as a whole.
The suggestions listed above assume that Perfect Shopper continues to only supply branded goods. Moving further upstream
in the supply chain potentially moves the company into the manufacture and supply of goods. This will raise a number of
significant issues about the franchise itself.
At present Perfect Shopper has, by necessity, concentrated on branded goods. It has not really had to understand how these
goods sell in specific locations because it has not been able to offer alternatives. The content of the standing order reflects
how the neighbourhood shop wishes to compete in its locality. However, if Perfect Shopper decides to commission its own
brand then the breadth of products is increased. Neighbourhood shops would be able to offer ‘own brand’ products to compete
with supermarkets who also focus on own brand products. It would also increase the visibility of the brand. However, Perfect
Shopper must be sure that this approach is appropriate as a whole. It could easily produce an own brand that reduces the
overall image of the company and hence devalues the franchise. Much more research is needed to assess the viability ofproducing ‘own brand’ goods.

正确答案：
(iii) If attendance = 100 then management would opt for room size A which would produce a contribution of ￡832,000 x
0·2 = ￡166,400.
If attendance = 200 then management would opt for room size B which would produce a contribution of ￡2,163,200
x 0·5 = ￡1,081,600.
If attendance = 400 then management would opt for room size D which would produce a contribution of ￡6,656,000
x 0·3 = ￡1,996,800.
Therefore the expected value of perfect information would be the sum of the expected values of the three possible
outcomes which amounts to ￡3,244,800. Thus, if the information is correct then management should be willing to pay
up to ￡3,244,800 – ￡1,497,600 = ￡1,747,200 for the information. In practice, it is unlikely that perfect information
is obtainable. The management of Envico Ltd are really buying an information system that will provide them with a signal
which may prove to be correct or incorrect! For example, the consultants may predict that demand will be for 300
seminar places, however there still remains the fact that there is a likelihood of actual demand being for either 100,
200 or 400 seminar places. One should be mindful that imperfect information which may be, say only 75% reliable,
might still be worth obtaining. Other than when the value of imperfect and perfect information are equal to zero, the
value of perfect information will always be greater than the value of imperfect information.