From a consumer's standpoint, when we think about inventory the only real question is whether or not an item is in stock. If the answer is "no," then we want to know why.

From a retailer's standpoint, however, it is a much more complicated process. Not only do businesses need to pay attention to what items are being sold and replenish them quickly, but they also need to predict future trends to make sure they are able to have the right items on the shelves at all times. When this is done wrong, the results can be dramatic for businesses.

A recent article from The Motley Fool profiled the department store Dillard's. Back in November, the company reported a large year-over-year increase in inventory. While some experts were puzzled by the move, Dillard's executives were not concerned and predicted it would been needed to support increased sales.

Unfortunately for the business leaders, that did not happen as the holiday sales numbers did not live up to projections. Instead, "aging inventory" went out of season and the company was forced to have high markdowns to clear the merchandise that otherwise would have sat on the shelves or in the back or house. Overall, its gross margin dropped by 55 basis points in Q4.

According to the article, the general rule is that inventory should not increase faster than sales. Dillard's sales by quarter last year rose at 1 percent in each when compared to the year before. However, in Q3 the inventory rose 6 percent. That is a recipe for disaster.

Merchants need to make sure they have the right inventory management software in place at all times.

The pulse of American goods-makers seems to be quickening, according to the most recent monthly report from the Institute for Supply Management. Last month, the figures looked good with a two-year-plus high noticed for manufacturing, and now, with November's results in, the increase seems to be continuing.

The release covering this recent report is positively triumphant, announcing last month as a time when all but three out of the 18 manufacturing sectors monitored saw some growth. Many aspects of the business, including employment, production and new orders, also saw a greater rate of growth. The industry that reported the most growth, according to the brief, was apparently the "plastics and rubber products" division.

However, this shouldn't just be seen as a victory lap for the stateside factories. The stats also show some slowness in a few key areas, including a two percentage point drop in "inventories," even though it was also said to be "growing."

This means that even though the overall measure taken by the institute has been on an upward trend for the better part of a year, as Bloomberg asserts, there's no call for companies to rest on their laurels, so to speak, since there seems to be some significant room for improvement in this area, perhaps with the help of suitable inventory management software.

That can seem like a lot of pressure to put on one interface, but the right inventory management software company should be able to help your business find its feet and boost its numbers by the time that next report comes around.

Ah, the holiday rush: although it isn't even Black Friday yet, the crunch that affects many different businesses and could call for an accelerated means of production can already potentially be on many a business manager's minds.

But stressful amounts of high demand will always be with us, no matter what time of year it is, and the solutions you choose to address these immediate problems may help set the standard for years to come. 

This appears to be the loud and clear message coming from the study released by Capgemini, which found that more than 80 percent of the supply chain managers it talked to "say it is challenging to adequately plan for supply chain capacity to address peak requirements or timely fluctuations in demand, including during the holiday season."

An inventory management system can be a crucial utility that you need to try and keep these periods of service strictly under your control. Robert Nathan's recent piece in MultiChannel Merchant also illustrates the way that proper control of a supply chain can make all the difference in these situations.

"To partially recoup the loss of sales through returns, businesses must bring items quickly and efficiently through their supply chains," he writes. "Each organization must take a hard look at their own supply chain to determine what course of action is best for them."

One benefit of picking up the right inventory management system can be the way it potentially might lead to that kind of personalized, reverse-engineered solution that your situation rightly demands.

In addition to the encouraging crop figures for Indiana corn and soybeans recently reported, what are some other raw local resources that your company can pay attention to? Depending on your market, your company might be interested in a certain seasonal crop that seems to find itself in everything this time of year: the pumpkin.

It may seem trifling, but consider the high demand for this popular gourd this time of year between September and December and you may see some useful potential applications for the inventory management system that you choose.

While Purdue University seems to have officially designated this only an "average" season of production for Hoosier pumpkins, given the somewhat harsh alternating conditions that the crop saw, it does show some sign of resilience for this fruit.

A release from that institution quoted scientist Dan Egel on the specific environmental changes that affected the harvest.

"The first half of the summer was good for providing moisture for the pumpkins, and most pumpkins are not irrigated," he said, adding that "in the second half of the season, some of the pumpkins on well-drained land lost yield because of the dry weather," which proved good in some cases for reducing the chance of disease.

Many a food companies or other producers might want to consider what environmental changes they need to be ready for and how an unexpected surge of weather would hurt or help them. To avoid any nasty surprises, your business can utilize inventory management software and retain a tight grip on the items vital to your business.

In addition to keeping your supply chain in tight communication with itself and able to react at a quick notice, your managers will need to have a concrete understanding of how different parties interact.

Manufacturing supply software can accomplish this, as it's an obvious need being felt within the industry and looked at in different ways. One surprisingly physical method is detailed in the MIT Technology review in the training program from MBA students at the college.

Called "the beer game" (though not in the way you might think) this is meant to demonstrate the management and resource coordination that goes into running a complicated system and what it takes to keep things solvent. Writer Peter Dizikes writes about how in his own experience he saw the team he worked with accumulate too high a volume of inventory in too little a time.

Using simple tabletop markers, this game attempts to represent the problems that managers run into over a series of weeks within the industry. The game involves hundreds of students and despite the seemingly simple setup, challenges the players to keep costs low in an effort to maximize profit. 

While it doesn't involve graduate competition, Google also has recently released its own approach to allowing businesses to integrate important business data into its map function to see the details of their practices rendered visually. 

It's likely that with the growth and proliferation of these systems, the role of inventory management systems will become even greater and be a more vital part of the planning that goes into these operations.