How the right MLM software can give your business an edge over others MLM businesses are a huge bureaucracy of employees, distributors, accounts, inventories, transactions, incentives, sales and discounts. Software helps in maintaining records and faster decision making.
Multi level marketing (MLM) is a decades old business model that offers complete financial freedom to its users for a small investment. The very essence of MLM is to keep adding sponsors, who in turn add users below them. This creates a huge network of individuals who work towards growing their personal MLM network by selling the company’s products/ services and by signing on more individuals as sponsors of the MLM company. This is a large number of people, similar to a huge bureaucracy with a lot of transactions, commissions and other business details. Hence, it is very important to have a strong MLM software that can help track the activities of all the company sponsors. Here are some ways in which an MLM software can give your business an edge:
¡ Easier accounting MLM companies are huge, considering the number of employees, sponsors, business owners, manufacturers and the huge networks that form a part of it. The sheer number of transactions that are involved in the process make accounting very important for tax and for internal profit/ loss statements. These details are needed to appraise the senior management and shareholders of the company’s performance. This is important as MLM companies give commissions and bonuses to their users based on a lot of factors, one of which is sales. Lack of a proper mechanism to track every transaction can lead to many losses, which can snowball into a financial disaster very soon. For instance, a wide range of offers and schemes are offered by MLM companies and accounting for their taxes,
discounts and incentives is a herculean task. Using a software lets a user compute all this data quickly and access it anytime at the click of a button.
¡ Inventory management MLM companies are active in a lot of countries, but they have manufacturing units present only in a few countries. Tracking the movement of goods to understand the time lag from production to sales is important. When the company has a lot of internal touch points, it is important to have a strong system that tracks the flow of goods at each level. This helps effectively plan production cycles that help extract the best cost from manufacturers due to economies of scale.
¡ Commissions & incentives Each sponsor/user is motivated by the commission that he/ she would receive from an MLM business for the additional users that he adds to his network and for the sales of products/ services. This is the main motivation for anyone to do this business. Not having a proper record of their performance can result in them receiving commissions/ incentives which are not in accordance with the company’s set plan. This will lead to a lot of confusion and a lot of disgruntled sponsors/users.
¡ Analysis of incentive schemes MLM businesses offer incentives and commissions to high performing sponsors. These schemes are regularly updated keeping in mind the performance of all the sponsors. Not having a proper system to track the performance can be catastrophic as this could bleed an MLM dry due to overpayment of incentives. Similarly, the incentive schemes are the main reason for a person to be with an MLM business and underpaying sponsors could result in unenthusiastic sponsors who are not keen to achieve targets.
¡ Faster decision making With MLM softwares, it is easier to keep record of all the transactions, distributors, details of incentives, payouts etc. and keep a tab on various activities that are happening throughout the business in various geographies. This frees up your human capital for more important tasks like sales, marketing, strategy and production. These tasks cannot be efficiently supervised by softwares and programs and need human intervention. Being able to recruit more human capital for increasing sales is always better as it is a profit centre for the company. Selecting a particular vendor is always a difficult and time consuming task and selecting an MLM software is no different. One such company which has proved to be the backbone behind many successful MLM businesses worldwide is DNB MLM SOFTWARE. The company has been in the industry for over 7 years and has softwares to fulfill the needs of every MLM company. A major reason for their success has been their focus on customizing their softwares for every MLM company as per their requirements. Their core competency has always been their solid performance in inventory, distributor network and downline management, appropriate reporting of sales, payouts, incentives, commissions and other minor details, which have a huge impact on the bottomline of an MLM company.
Conclusion MLM softwares are definitely the lifeblood of a business and working without IT in today’s age is like living without oxygen. Given the cut throat competition in the MLM industry, it is only wise to choose a software that gives you an edge over others.