the cima student

The CIMA strategic case study was my favourite exam of the lot. By the time I sat the SCS exam I was in full CIMA swing with my studies and motivation couldn’t have been any higher.

It’s your final exam.

I recommend that students should embrace it and not fear it. If you have reached this far, then the hardest part is done, you just need to jump the final hurdle.

With that in mind, the SCS students have a scenario called Pixlwizz.

A very succesful LISTED software company (founded in 1986) who make and develop their own games.

You can find the official pre seen materials from CIMA here.

SWOT Analysis: Pixlwizz

STRENGHS: Corporate Governance

When putting together a SWOT analysis it was clear that Pixlwizz is a brilliantly run company that has a clear vision, infrastructure and corporate governance in place. Every key indicator ticked the box for me.

• Board of Directors and Non Exec Diretors roles and expertise
• Risk Management
• Customer Awareness
• Share Price increase year on year
• Revenues and Profits increasing quicker than competitors (15% v. 6-7%)

Every page you turn in the pre-seen paints a picture of a succesful and well run company, there is a clear strategy and they are executing it very well. And it all starts from the top, the board of directors and corporate governance they have in place is the bedrock of any successful public listed company.

WEAKNESSES: Reliance on Third Parties

The pre-seen materials make a couple of nods to the third parties they rely on for their cloud/network services – specifically speaking “Cloudbor”.

The Westland Daily News article at the back of the pre seen materials tells us about a major incident that caused a server outage for Cloudbor that meant users of Pixlwizz’s games couldn’t access their platform for a sustained period.

To the credit of Pixlwell, they are already well aware of this risk and have it highlighted in their annual report risk register but there might be further need to migate risk rather than accepting it on the basis that, well, Cloudbor are also a huge public listed company so we can trust them.

It could be feasible for Pixlwizz to develop their own in-house cloud services, not only to mitigate this risk but cloud based gaming is expected to have huge growth in the coming years so it could become a critical success factor of the company.

OPPORTUNITIES: Viral Marketing and Social Media

The software and gaming industry is highly competitive and fast moving. The pre seen materials make reference to the fact there is a unknown factor around how gamers will respond to a new product, while there is also reference to viral marketing to attract gamers attention and new customers.

The below is taken from the Westland Telegraph news article at the back.

While viral marketing is hardly new, the prevalence of social media and the fact that most video games are played online, means that it is easy for happy gamers to encourage their friends to buy copies of a favourite game.

There could be an opportunity here to include prompts during the game for gamers to share status updates, recommendations and/or reviews via a click here link. Also, direct links to facebook/twitter/instagram promoting pixlwizz is a great opportunity to attract new customers.

THREATS: Competitors

This threat comes in two-fold. Firstly, given the fact that the Jakob Plunge franchose provides pixlwizz with 19% of their total revenues, there is a big threat that an exisiting competitor will launch a rival product in a bid to take market-share from pixlwizz.

Secondly, there is also the threat that third party hardware manufacturers also develop and publish their own games and in turn become a direct competitior.

That said, given all of the positive signals we receive from the pre-seen materials (see above strengths), pixlwizz are in the strong place to combat these threats.

CIMA SCS Feb 2022: Pixlwizz Astranti Course

The full SCS Pixlwizz course is rammed full of resources and tutor support – I used the Astranti SCS course when passing my final CIMA exam at the first attempt – you can read about how I passed the SCS exam here.

• Pre seen materials pack (analysis, top 10 issues, industry examples & 30 questions)
• 5 x mock exams with feedback
• Syllabus theory revision series
• Exam technique series
• Ethics and questions packs
• Tutor feedback
• Pass guarantee & money back guarantee

Good Luck with your studies.