MANAGEMENT CASE STUDY

STUDY AND EXAM GUIDE

(MANAGEMENT CASE STUDY EXAMINATION)
INTRODUCTION
Once you successfully displayed proficiency in the Enterprise, TECHNICAL SKILLS (39% OF TOTAL SCORE)
Performance and Financial disciplines in the Objective Test
The MCS takes you beyond the requirement to perform specific
Examinations, CIMA invites you to demonstrate how that
proficiency will be put to use in the workplace through the calculations or a straightforward demonstration of knowledge.
You will be expected to explain the benefits of applying certain
Integrated Case Study Examinations.
techniques to the scenario or to interpret the findings of a
You are expected to demonstrate the integration between the previously prepared analysis or report. By doing so in a way that
different disciplines which might be expected of a management is appropriate to the task in hand, you will be demonstrating the
accountant working in a volatile, uncertain, complex and necessary technical skills.
ambiguous business environment. Such innovation is expected to
The technical skills used in the case study will be drawn from
bring questions and challenges and this document aims to guide
across the E2, P2 and F2. The MCS allows more thorough
you in your preparation for and performance in the MCS.
examination of the higher level skills such as analysis, synthesis,
interpretation and justification of recommendations.
SKILLS YOU NEED TO DEVELOP
The Case Study Examinations are intended to demonstrate that BUSINESS SKILLS (24% OF TOTAL SCORE)
you can apply the technical, business, people and leadership
skills from the learning outcomes in the three subjects in a The MCS is designed to test whether you can appreciate that a
given syllabus topic may have different benefits or applications in
particular level in a business context.
different business contexts. These skills are developed in the
There is no additional syllabus content for you to learn as you workplace, but for exam preparation you should develop an
should have all the knowledge you need from your studies of the interest in the business news and practice and review of
three subjects at Management level. In the MCS exam you are business-based case studies. If you produce a list of benefits and
expected to role-play a typical a Finance Manager whose Job drawbacks of a management accounting technique without
Specification may appear as follows. saying why they are benefits in the given context, you will not
As the Finance Manager, you are responsible for monitoring the earn credit for business skills.
implementation of strategy. Your focus is on the medium term, There is no discrete list of business skills that you should be
and you need to translate the long-term strategy (decided at the aiming to develop or tick off in the exam; the expectation is that
senior management / board level), into more tangible shorter-term you will be conscious of the fictitious organisation in which you
goals (to be implemented at the operational level). are working for the purpose of the MCS as a Finance Manager.
Decisions need to be taken about which investments in products;
their prices and the long-term assets are needed to ensure they
are produced. The costing calculated at the operational level will PEOPLE SKILLS (21% OF TOTAL SCORE)
help with this. The costing information will also enable you to People skills are beyond the learning outcomes or indicative
analyse and manage the drivers of costs. These decisions syllabus content and are described in the above Job Specification
cannot be made in a vacuum; they need to consider the of a Finance Manager. To be business ready trainee
environment in which the business operates, as well as key management accountants are expected to develop skills including
stakeholders. The performance of both individuals and of communication, persuasion and understanding others needs.
divisions needs to be measured.
A more detailed consideration of risk is required for this longer
term decision making, as well as the options for long-term LEADERSHIP SKILLS (16% OF TOTAL SCORE)
finance. More advanced financial reporting is required in order to The tasks you will have to perform will expect analysis of a
paint a picture of past performance; this may involve group situation to consider how to drive performance or to manage
accounts for a number of entities. organisations and teams through change. Although E2 presents
You will have to produce Management Information such as raw some theories on this area for testing in the objective test exams,
data, performance information, cost reports and present reality the MCS will assess application of those theories by asking you
through numbers. You may have to influence your CFO and the to respond to simulated scenarios where the response has to be
senior business managers. appropriate for the issue at hand, rather than a demonstration of
book learning.
KNOWLEDGE REQUIRED of the pre-seen material, instead you are expected remember the
key themes of the pre-seen materials so that you are able refer
You may have passed some or all of your Management level
back when and if needed during the MCS.
subjects few months ago. However, you are expected to
remember the key theories, models, frameworks, and calculations Note: The pre-seen material will feature in all (five) case variants
etc you learnt so that you may apply them in the business in a given exam window.
context to the fictitious organisation the MCS.
On the other hand, you may have been exempted from one or
more of the management level subjects in which case you need
AVAILABILITY OF PRE-SEEN MATERIAL
to check for knowledge gaps. Download the CIMA syllabus for The pre-seen material will be available for you 7 weeks before the
more information E2 (page 48) | P2 (page 56) | F2 (page 62) case study window opens. During the exam, all the introductory
overview information (pre-seen materials) will be available as an
exhibit for you to refer back to. You should know your way around
EXAM WINDOW the material before the exam; it is included in the exam only for
The MCS will be held during the third week (generally five days) reassurance and occasional reference, perhaps allowing you to
in every exam-month February, May, August and November. check a detail or a figure.
rd
(Note: the first MCS is scheduled in the week commencing 23 If any of the pre-seen material is required for responding to a task,
February, 2015 in order to allow all adequate time for exam it is most likely that the specific section of material will be singled
preparation) out and repeated in the main body of the question.

PRE-SEEN MATERIAL SCENE-SETTING

You will have access to 1-2 sides of introductory overview There will be 3 4 sections in the MCS and in each section
information (pre-seen material) on a fictitious organisation. In there may be one or several task(s). For each section, there will
addition to this, a number of documents with further information be a brief announcement of a situation or issue that has arisen
about the organisation and the industry in which it operates will on, or shortly before, the date of the exam. It describes an event
be released as part of the pre-seen material. These additional or additional information which has given a colleague cause to
materials could include information on the fictional organisation in require information and assistance from a management
the pre-seen and the wider industry in which it operates. E.g. accountant.
information such as the products, market, competitors, key
employees, financial highlights. It may be in one of many forms, including: a news article; minutes
from a meeting; a reported conversation with a colleague; a
At Management Level, the Finance Managers job role is both market announcement from a competitor, or a letter from a
internally and externally focused so there will be both internal stakeholder. There are many possible formats and there may be
and external information. Information about the industry in combinations of formats, such as an email with an attached
general may be drawn from data in the public domain but it will be article. The issue raised in the scene setting moves time forward
tailored to the specifics of the MCS. in the case study scenario along with the section of the exam.

PURPOSE OF PRE-SEEN MATERIAL TASKS

The purpose of the introductory overview information is to allow Tasks will appear in the form of a request or an instruction from a
you to familiarise yourself with the (fictitious) organisation you will colleague to provide information, analysis or advice in response
be working within when the role play of the MCS starts. to issues arising from scene setting information. Therefore, the
Therefore, the pre-seen material is intended to give a deeper tasks will not be structured in the same way as the traditional
understanding of the issues facing the industry or market in exam question requirements and therefore the CIMA verb
which the organisation operates or trades; allowing greater depth hierarchy will not be used explicitly.
to answers and, particularly, demonstration of Business Skills. As
there will be a limited number of separate documents, you need
not over-research and waste preparation time on real life facts TIME MANAGEMENT DURING THE EXAM
Familiarity with the Pre-Seen
Exam time will be used most effectively if you are familiar with the
and statistics. You are expected to apply yourself and refer to the contents of the pre-seen material. This does not mean that it
organisation and the industry described in the pre-seen materials. should be learnt by heart, only that you should know the nature of
the information available so that, if required when answering, you
know it is available and can search for it efficiently.
The introductory overview information will also allow you to add
context to recommendations or observations made in responding
to the tasks, and therefore act as reference material for the OCS, Time Available within the Exam
rather than content to be learnt comprehensively ahead of the Each section has a strict time allowance. You will be told the time
exam. Therefore, you are best advised to read the introductory allowance for each section before the exam begins and will have
overview information thoroughly and consider issues that are a countdown clock on screen in the top right hand corner.
brought to light by the content.
During the time available for a section, you will have to:
In other words, the pre-seen material will not become assumed
knowledge when attempting the exam and you will not earn any Read the (unseen) Scene-Setting information, that
credit directly for having learnt the content in great detail. There provides the basis for the task(s)
will not be background facts and data on which you will be
specifically examined. You are not expected to remember details
 Identify the task or tasks, being sure to distinguish A good answer is not necessarily a long answer and, in all
separate components within each task probability, a long answer is not necessarily a good answer. Most
Plan an answer which covers all the required issues tasks involve preparing a document for a fictitious boss. In
general, bosses do not want to have page after page of
Produce the answer information to read through; they want a succinct and focused
Check your answer analysis of the situation about which they are concerned.

The cases are written and time allocated to accommodate all of Typing speed of 20 words per minute in general will be sufficient
the above activities. to produce a good-sized answer a rate which is achieved or
bettered by more than 90% of office workers.
It is far more important to focus on quality than quantity. Make
sure you address the task / all the tasks. Think about your
Reading the Scene-Setting Information
presentation: using short sentences and brief paragraphs; insert
paragraph or section headings to draw attention to how your
This is not a lengthy task; you are simply being given some
answer addresses the tasks, and keep the language appropriate
additional information which moves the scenario on in time. You
to the recipient of your document.
will be able to refer back to this information once you have been
set your task and can draw information from the task as you need
when planning or producing your answer.
Checking your answer
Identifying the tasks You will be given a warning when there are five minutes of a
section remaining. At that point, you should stop writing and read
This requires careful reading but should not take more than three over the answer youve created so far, ensuring that it:
of four minutes. You have to be sure to identify all separate
components within a task. Covers the points you raised in your plan
For instance, section one of the MCS practice exam asks for two Presents a logical discussion
distinct areas to be covered in a report: (1) strategic analysis of a Prioritises issues according to what you understand the
prolonged increase in fuel price and (2) evaluation of the ways of concerns of the organisation to be
adopting activity-based management and target costing. The first
of these requires you to specifically analyse the impact of You can use the cut and paste function to re-prioritise paragraphs
increase in the price of jet fuel to the given organisation (Fly-jet). if you feel it necessary and can return to any paragraph to add or
You would need to have identified these so that your answer delete text in order to improve the focus and coverage of your
clearly addresses what is required from you. answer.

Finishing a section
Answer planning
When the countdown clock reaches 00:00 you will be unable to
As a rough rule, planning an answer should take up one third of do any more work on that section. The exam will move you onto
the time available. If you have 45 minutes for a section, you the next section and you will have no opportunity to review or
should spend up to 15 minutes of that time to: alter the work done in previous sections.
Note: You may move onto the next section, before the allocated
Read the scene-setting information
time lapses. But, you are unable to carry forward any time that is
Identify the task(s) in the question unspent on the previous section. Therefore, even though you
Plan the answer to cover all aspects required of the could finish producing your answer for a section in a lesser time
answer than allowed, use the remaining time to check your answer.

There are three areas in which you can create your plan:
HOW TO STUDY?
1. The on-screen scratch pad (available to try on the
Do some research before choosing how you are going to study
interactive tutorial available on cimaglobal.com)
for your MCS make sure the option you choose will suit you and
2. The wipe-clean note pad given to you in the test centre the way you learn best.
3. The space available for presenting your answer
(although you would have to be very careful to ensure Follow a taught course with a tuition provider
that your plan doesnt remain there to get confused with Distance learning with CIMAstudy.com
your final answer) Self study with official CIMA text books

In preparing the plan, ensure that you have addressed the

competencies expected at your level. It will be insufficient to
provide technically perfect definitions of terms requiring PRACTICE TEST
discussion; you will have to apply them to the organisation in the
scenario. Additionally, try to include aspects of people skills and You should familiarise yourself with the format of the MCS by
leadership skills in your plan so that the answer integrates the looking at our practice test.
competencies. Download the practice test guidance notes
Register for the MOCS

Producing the answer

REGISTER FOR YOUR MCS EXAM
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