Most companies sit on mountains of inventory data and only use it to answer one question: "Do we have it in stock or not?" But when Sales, Marketing, and Purchasing all tap into the same three signals, something interesting happens — everyone starts pulling in the same direction instead of stepping on each other's toes. 1. Knowing What's About to Run Out (and What's Just Sitting There) Items Running Out Picture this: Marketing launches a beautiful campaign for a product that'

While working in retail across different companies and teams, I kept running into the same gap. No matter how advanced the systems were or how experienced the managers using them, one simple question remained surprisingly difficult to answer: "What is the real state of our inventory right now?" I'm not talking about questions like "What did we ship yesterday?" or "Which purchase orders are currently in transit?" I'm talking about the questions that reveal the bigger picture: