Page 13 - CIMA OCS Workbook February 2019 - Day 1 Tasks

TRIGG ADVENTURE FAMILIARISATION

Sourcing strategy

Trigg decided recently to bring installation in-house after problems with approved partners but
has yet to do the same with ground work. Ensure you can discuss the pros and cons of this move.
Marketing – 4Ps
Marketing is always a key issue within the operational case study. In the case of Trigg obvious
areas could be to examine ways of improving promotion (e.g. updating the website)
Human Resources

Trigg’s operations are highly labour intensive and the company has low staff turnover and high
wages. The main problem is that Trigg may need to automate in order to remain competitive in
which case ensure you can discuss different ways to reduce staff numbers.

P1
The environment

The eco-friendly nature of the industry is emphasised in the pre-seen in terms of it attracting
government grants and the possible importance to winning commercial contracts. Make sure you
revise both the E1 and P1 aspects of CSR and environmental accounting to discuss how Trigg
could measure and improve its green footprint.
Quality

Trigg emphasises the high quality of products but we are told little about quality control. Given
this there could be an exam task that focusses on assessing the costs of quality (P1) and discussing
whether TQM (E1 and P1) should be adopted by Trigg.
Costing

The way the budgets are presented would indicate that Trigg uses marginal costing. Revise the
pros/cons/difficulties of switching to absorption costing and, within this, how they could use ABC.
Budgeting systems
Trigg current use an incremental approach for commercial contracts, so it is likely that in one
variant there will a task asking you to discuss whether they should switch to ZBB. Make sure you
can discuss pros, cons and suitability.
Decision making

We are told the company will be developing new product lines so expect to discuss the risks
associated with this using CVP analysis, break-even, etc.

In addition, there will probably be exam variants that explore decision making under constraints –
for example, if a cutting machine were to breakdown. Be prepared to discuss the best approach –
contribution per machine hour or throughput or... – and justify why that approach is to be
preferred.
F1

Working capital
Inventory levels seem excessively high, so make sure you can discuss different approaches to
reducing this adn the likely pros and cons of each approach.
Revenue, grants and marketing

The Fawland government has offered grants to companies that improve their green footprint.
Given this, make sure you can discuss the accounting treatment of different grants.

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