| One of the main targets while the development of BO-Cash was, to avoid any
hidden configuration parameters. All of them are shown for the administrator and can be
changed for every group or company during the simulation. As well as the configuration of
the company, the characteristics for the products and markets are variable and can be
changed at any time. As a result, it is possible to calculate all result by hand.
The second target was, to make it easy for the administration to control the
simulation. The system is preconfigured with a usable initial situation, so that the
administrator need only to finalize the periods. Nevertheless, the administrator has
the total control over the simulation.
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| Ill.1 Main Window for the market calculation |
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| As far as needed, the administrator can change the settings, i.e. the
elasticity or the saturation as well as the weightiness
of the different marketing instruments. Therefore the administrator is able, to adjust the
simulation to a real situation. |
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Ill. 2: Settings for the product and market
characteristics |
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| By changing die percentages for the
"Sales-effects" you can adjust the dynamic efficiency for the four instruments. That
means that you can restrict the efficiency to the current period or to expand to to
future period. In that way, the efficiency will have a time lag as can experienced at
the real markets. |
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Ill. 3: Time dynamic influence of the market activities |
| Ill. 2 shows, that the instrument "prices" will have an
influence only to the current period. In contrast the influence of the "Advertising" is
only 30% for the current period, but 30% in the next period and another 40% in the three
periods after. |
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| Additionally to the possibilities to change the market behaviour, the
administrator can see and change all other values at any time, which have any influence
to results of the participants. You can define learning and experience
curves, changes of personnel costs or productivity, one time events like invitations to
bid and a lot of more other factors. |
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| To control the complexity, the administrator can decide,
which parts of the simulation should be shown to the participants. Therefore the
simulation can be started in a very simple way and gets more and more complex during the
simulation. |
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Abb. 4: Adjustment of the complexity |