Legal influences in HR alone will make you want to scream; all the laws, regulations, contract negotiations, etc. will take some time to get your head around. Otherwise, the rest of HR is pretty decent. Marketing and Operations are very straight forward, and are the best topics to use for your section IV report because of how easy it is to draw comparisons with content and your case study. For finance, you just need to remember the accounting equation ( A - L = OE ), calculating cost of goods sold (COGS), and gross and net profit. The financial ratios are provided to you in the exam, but you need to know what they are used for. The financial reports are pretty easy, just know what falls under categories such as current/non current assets/liabilities.