Challenges faced during MLM Software development

Like it or not some days, you will find your business challenging and even cruel on other days! In MLM business, the complications are even worse as there exist lots and lots of calculations. These calculations have to meet certain criteria and the best solution is to automate the business!

MLM Software is one of the best tools available to manage the whole deal of network marketing business in automation mode. It helps the MLM companies or admin teams in organizing, managing, and controlling the entire business. If there are so many difficulties in MLM business then how complicated is an MLM Software?

A system that can handle millions of users, can you imagine how a handy task it is? What are the security measures to consider without compromising any sort of breaching possibilities!

As an MLM Software developing company, Epixel over these years has faced and addressed many concerns involved while developing MLM Software platform and direct sales software systems that automate their operations and processes/workflows. MLM software can be categorized into binary MLM software, unilevel MLM software, matrix MLM software, monoline MLM software etc based on various compensation plans.

Let’s drill down the common issues faced by software developers during the development stage.

• Setting a systematic payment period in the system without any failure
• Individual compensation calculation and generating accurate reports before the payout date
• Tracking distributor activities and provide the admin insights from the results
• Setting criteria for rank achievement and bonus structure for different MLM compensation plans
• Adding more modules if the requirements get wider and need to edit the existing codes in a way that meets the new criteria
• Integrating new technology to the system without causing any issues in the existing system
• User-friendly issues that provide a negative impact among the users
• Issues while a new user joins the network like the sign-in issues, user verification failure, KYC miss-match, etc.
• Errors in eligibility criteria set during coding but failed after a certain period of time which leads to bugs
• Logical conflicts in the development journey
• Security threats, lots of issues occur and mostly these problems raise after the development stage i.e., once the public gain access to the MLM system

These challenges are usually checked by a skilled module testing team and provide back to the developer with a set of bugs to fix. What if the team hasn’t gone through a proper business process and has invested little time in the testing environment. The system is delivered to the client end untested? The system will collapse and eventually ends up in business loss!

Below are the common issues faced during the development stages. But apart from these common issues, there are certain high-end challenges to face in the MLM system.

Before getting deep into such challenges, we shall go through some use cases that raised the question of a challenge among the developers!

Tramor comes from the South American part and owns a direct selling startup. He started off with a local MLM Software developer team, without emphasizing much concern on the quality of the package. He didn’t even go through the demo version and instead chose them as technology providers.

A month passed in no time and he got a late-night call from Mrs. Davis. When he picked the call she was complaining about not receiving the payout the previous day. Tramor thought the system must have missed her due to some technical error. After an hour or more, he again received calls from other distributors with the same complaints. He dialed the providers and explained the situation. They didn’t take the issue in great spirit and told him they will be looking at the issue by the next day.

The next day was mostly a melancholic one and when Tramor checked the system he found too many errors - the payout date is still missing, missing a few members in the list, even his direct downlines & their commissions aren’t properly updated. Holly Mary, he thought and met the software providers. He found the truth behind such an unprofessional act. They don’t have a good team to test the system, logical developers or even good support.

Due to this reason, his entire business kingdom fell down and every distributor tagged his genuine business as “spam”. He faced legal issues later and all of these because of a bad decision regarding technology providers.

Somehow he managed to pay the compensation by hand. He wasn’t going to give up now, so he was in a quest to find another system - the scope of migration, the next use case will be based on this idea. In this case, the calculation logic was utter worst and too many conflicts were emerging out of the system. With clutters of logical issues, once again things went down to the bottom!

Tramor after such a terrible incident has found migration as the next hope and he was checking for the scope of finding the right partner. The existing system might be like a torn out book but somehow those data are necessary while switching to a new one.

He was searching everywhere to find the best software providers and taking enough time, he found the best one considering various criteria. He contacted the team and went through the MLM software demo available on their official website. He was very much satisfied and the lesson learned from the previous experience helped him this time. Finally, he chose them as new providers.

Yes, they have provided valuable migration services and finally, made a contract with them. They have started the work and were updating the reports regularly. They have done the job and migrated the system easily as it was in the ‘infant stage’. Tramor finally met the best system which he was searching for and recommended the system to his friends.

Adam who owns a beauty care company has been working with a popular IT firm regarding the direct selling program. He found Tramor getting more successful and decided to give a try with the new providers for beauty and cosmetics MLM platform. He contacted the team and ended the agreement with his previous partners. However, his business was running for the past 4 years or so and the migration to the new system never looked perfect from the beginning.

Somehow they managed to migrate the entire data and provided Adam with a new MLM system. Problems began to show up after a while, bonus mismatches, rank conflicts, missing transaction records, logical confusions and much more. Adam for the first time in his business career struggled to answer the questions raised by his distributors. Panic began to crawl down his throat and even smooth system providers weren’t able to provide a smooth one like before.

They weren’t up for the challenge and developers failed to meet the goal. Adam will have to switch back to the old one, make the new team do the job (probability is too narrow), find a new team who is up to the mark. Really, what can he do now? Scalability is one of the important factors one must consider when making a decision.

He is trapped again and is yet another use case scenario where even the best team failed to rise up to the occasion.

Logan, a 62-year-old network marketing consultant made up his mind to start his own marketing program. He has 40 years of experience as a network marketing consultant so he thought it would be a nice idea to have his own business firm.

Instead of searching for a package, he hired a team of developers and provided them with the requirement chart. Within a span of two months, they have deployed the package and delivered it in the given time. Logan carefully analyzed the complete system and everything was perfect.

The system was working well and as more members joined in the network, he found the existing compensation structure needs to have a little modification here and there. He added a few extra bonus and commission structures with certain eligibility criteria. The team was re-grouped and assigned this update. They made the update and the system is back on air in no time.

A month after the monthly reports were generated, his face became pale! The bonus and commission structure collapsed and the calculations proved to be wrong this time. 5 members who weren’t even eligible for receiving the bonus received the new bonus. 14 members didn’t receive any bonus even though they have given extra efforts to sell more products. Some haven’t achieved eligibility even though they have added more members with higher ranks.

The members won’t be happy with the results and he was expecting a team to drop off from the system. He contacted the team to make the necessary changes within a limited time frame and they have tried their best to alter the mistakes but they couldn’t achieve the desired result.

Here the main issue that caused this type of error was the logical difference in compensation calculation. While the issue could have been solved with a perfectly-crafted MLM calculator, the team wasn’t up to the challenge and not having enough analytical skills to apply them in the developing stage. Not every technically strong programmer can create an MLM system easily, it does require great skills to analyze business calculation and then a good testing team to test every criterion one after the other.

There are many such instances and use cases to study the difficulties.

It’s these challenges that keep developers busy and as a part of finding critical issues that might cause a complete system collapse, we have decided to conduct a session with the experts from the Epixel team. By performing every possible scenario we have come up with a list of issues and the solution maintained to follow in such circumstances.