New Simbound Sense expected to be released to public on 10th of December 2018

Posted on 3 December, 2018 by Administrator

Simbound is getting ready to release a new version of the original digital marketing simulation product, codenamed ‘Sense’. With the speed of change in all things digital, the name recognises the fact that students and professionals need to make better sense of what is happening in the commercial online world. Sense reaches beyond the simple mechanics and technical aspects of carrying out online commerce and promotions and will be looking to help develop ‘a sixth sense’ in today’s digital business people in the way they deal with data, and how they respond to fast changing consumer preferences while managing multiple technologies. Simbound Sense continues our pioneering work in the field of experiential internet marketing learning and opens up new opportunities across our customer and reseller network.

The Sense product is currently undergoing a series of initial market tests carried out in real course environments together with our respected education partners, the first one being Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal (Portugal) with Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj (Romania) following close behind. The Simbound partner institutions who are showing a direct interest in progressing research and development for the newly minted pedagogical field of experiential digital marketing learning make proof that they understand the importance of sound authorship values together with us. 
 

With the addition of the new community management module, Sense will retake its crown as the most intuitive and advanced educational product of its kind. We would like to take this opportunity to recognise the professors and the students, their institutions and the entire Simbound team along the years which have made this advancement possible. The Simbound methodology has grown in adoption every year since it was started back in 2012. 

We at Simbound would like to use this moment to thank you for your continued collaboration!  Our success is shared and this is obvious when looking at the thousands of students which are spread worldwide and doing amazing things for their employers and their own startups.

Here is a lowdown on the new functionality that Sense provides as of today:  
 

Product:

- Marketing Planner This tool helps simulation participants set up light version marketing plans before they go on to make decisions in the simulation. This is thought out as a new onboarding component which will help initial users with learning about the products that they will be promoting and motivate them when setting the right objectives. The marketing planner facilitates intra-team collaboration by setting the right premises on which team members will interact on. It offers a suggested roadmap with a time period breakdown (Gantt chart) for the initial simulation rounds which includes different activities such as creating marketing plans, working on creative marketing assets and interpreting simulation results. Each user will automatically share his or her plans with the rest of their team. Browsing multiple plans and choosing the right course of action is accessible through a visual, keyboard-operated interface. 

- As an instructor you can now hide the SEM or E-mail (or both) simulation components until a preset round. This option allows to synchronise the simulation content with that of your own course calendar ensuring students have the appropriate theoretical knowledge before they go on to set up and run realistic integrated digital marketing campaigns in a simulated environment 

- New currencies in which you can use the simulation (e.g. GBP, CNY, USD)
-New Translation System: Get in touch to arrange the translation of Simbound into your own language. 
-Decisions log (timeline) by which instructors and even students from the same team will be kept up to date with the latest changes that were made to their simulation decisions. Instructors can now easily pinpoint the amount of work that has been done by each student and grade participation accordingly. 
-One-stop information panel. This is a highly requested feature from past Simbound users and it is now available as a non-directed digital tutorial. The small [i] (info) symbol located in the upper right corner prompts a contextual overlay which lists instructions on how to operate the different features found on each screen. These short explanations are easy to browse and provide simple to follow step-by-step guidance
- New Home Page feature, by which the home page cannot be modified and is the same for all teams 
- New Funnel chart to illustrate the logic behind the website analytics simulation 
- New e-Mail marketing simulation feature, which allows to quickly transform a web (landing) page into an e-mail, greatly reducing the time and knowledge required to produce e-mail templates and the associated copy 
- Newly rewritten e-Mail module which calculates results based on several factors suchas: content quality, number of times the message was sent, a price discount component which will automatically be displayed in the subject line when activated 
- Customisable visual themes and on-page elements such as chart headers. 
- Easily generate a PDF report which you can share, or show in class 
- Major graphics and functionality updates

Technology: 

- Full viewing compatibility with tablets and phone devices. Limited functionality when working on smaller screens (e.g. iPhone 5, SE etc.)
- New results dashboard and report for instructors. Option to compare two ongoing courses for large cohorts. 
- New methods for data visualisation across the platform: new data graphs, new option to display graphs into full screen
- New, time-series based decision entry method (this is an easter egg, let us know if you find it)