ACCA APM study guide
ACCA APM · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
ACCA Advanced Performance Management (APM) is one of the four Strategic Professional Options exams in the ACCA Qualification. It is aimed at candidates who have completed the Essentials exams and want to specialise in performance management rather than audit, tax or financial management. The syllabus is built around four areas: strategic planning and control; performance measurement and management; performance evaluation and analysis; and strategic performance management and control in specialised contexts. In practice the exam asks you to apply management accounting and performance measurement techniques to business scenarios - evaluating divisional and corporate performance, critiquing measurement systems, and advising on strategic control issues - rather than to recall definitions. The ACCA APM study guide has 4 sections and about 1,154 words.
01Strategic Planning and Control
Strategic planning moves through mission and objectives, environmental appraisal, option generation, evaluation and choice, implementation, and review. Candidates must distinguish strategic, tactical and operational levels of control and recognise that control is a feedback loop, not a one-off plan.
301 words, about 2 min02Performance Measurement and Management
Performance measurement links objectives, critical success factors (CSFs), key performance indicators (KPIs) and targets. CSFs are what must go right; KPIs are the measures that tell you whether they are going right.
279 words, about 1 min03Performance Evaluation and Analysis
You must be able to compute and interpret variances - material, labour, overhead, sales mix and yield - and, crucially, explain their causes and interrelationships . The trap is calculating a variance correctly and then interpreting it in isolation; a favourable material price variance may explain an adverse material usage variance (cheaper, poorer-quality material).
284 words, about 1 min04Strategic Performance Management in Specialised Contexts
In not-for-profit (NFP) and public sector organisations, the value-for-money (VFM) framework applies: economy (cost of inputs), efficiency (inputs to outputs), effectiveness (outputs to outcomes). Understand the multiple, often conflicting, objectives and the difficulty of measuring outcomes.
290 words, about 1 min