When unauthorized sellers threaten your entire business model, speed matters. Herbalife discovered how AI can turn a months-long investigation process into automated, proactive protection—delivering results in just days.

The Challenge: Protecting a Global Direct Sales Model

Herbalife's Member Business Practices & Compliance (MPC) team faced a significant challenge. Distributors were violating the company's direct sales model by diverting products to unauthorized online marketplaces—undermining legitimate distributors, eroding brand trust, and threatening the integrity of Herbalife's marketing plan.

The traditional process was resource-intensive: manually identifying violators, investigating each case for 60-90 days, and allocating 10-20 days of investigator time per case. The team needed a better way to identify and stop unauthorized sellers before patterns escalated.

The Solution: AI-Powered Proactive Intelligence

Axis Group partnered with Herbalife to build a custom machine learning solution that would shift the approach from reactive enforcement to proactive prevention. Rather than chasing violators after months of damage, the AI would identify unauthorized sellers early—and stop them immediately.

The approach combined:

• Data centralization across Herbalife's global systems (Oracle, MongoDB, Snowflake, Power BI)
• Custom ML models trained to detect violation patterns at scale
• Enforcement workflows that block accounts and trigger communications
• Real-time dashboards giving investigators instant visibility into distributor behavior

The Results: Transformation at Scale

The three-month pilot program across three regions (North America, APAC, and EMEA) delivered immediate, measurable impact:

• 80% time savings in the investigation and resolution process
• 7 days vs. 60-90 days to address violations
• Minimal false positives with high model accuracy
• Early detection and prevention stopping violations before they scale

Perhaps most validating: when the AI identified and blocked suspicious accounts, 80% of flagged distributors never called back to dispute it—confirming the model's precision in identifying actual violations.

From Pilot to Enterprise Standard

What began as a three-month pilot is now becoming standard operating procedure across Herbalife's global compliance operations. The team is expanding to India and Latin America, refining regional models, and automating even more of the workflow.

As Vikas from Herbalife's compliance team noted: "It's just so much easier to find these issues and look at these organizations and individuals through the dashboard that we have."

The transformation goes beyond efficiency. Investigators now focus on strategic analysis rather than manual case research. Legitimate distributors are protected faster. And Herbalife can demonstrate to its network that enforcement decisions are data-driven.

When AI solves real business problems with measurable results, the impact is transformative: 80% time savings, rapid case resolution, and a protected business model.

Learn how Axis Group can help your organization turn compliance challenges into competitive advantages with practical AI solutions.