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.