Who is Business AdvantEdge?

We are a small business (SMB) and professional association member benefit provider. Our contracts with Fortune 500 Companies and other key business service suppliers allow us to aggregate sales under one purchasing umbrella, translating into discounts and other member benefits.

Who should join BA?

Small-to-medium businesses (SMB)
Small-to-medium non-profit organizations such as 501c3s
Franchise, Trade and Professional Associations that represent SMBs and non-profits

How will my business benefit?

SMB companies typically don’t have enough purchasing volume with suppliers to negotiate proprietary pricing and discounts on their own – but as a Business AdvantEdge affiliate, you do! Save on office supplies and equipment, HR and financial services, telecom, gas, shipping, travel, etc. You’ll also benefit from value added features such as free shipping, monthly promotions, two-for-one pricing, waived fees, and more. Spending less on office supplies or shipping means lower overhead. Simply stated, that translates into more profit! Click on Member Benefits for more details.

How will our association benefit?

Franchise, Trade and Professional Associations that serve the SMB market know the value of offering a variety of attractive member benefits ranging from accredited continuing education to volume discounts. With the Business AdvantEdge Association program, not only does your HQ qualify for discounts, but your members as well. Enriching your affinity benefit program with these discounted programs helps build your membership base – it increases both member recruitment and retention. In addition, your organization may qualify for royalties or other supplemental income. Contact us at 888-734-3343 or email us for details and visit the Member Associations page above for a sample list of participating Associations.

How do I join?

Associations should contact us for a proposal. Business owners and non-profits should click on Become A Member for a membership form. Questions? Call 888-734-EDGE or email us at: info@business-edge.net. Specific program details including discounts, vendors, etc. can be found on the Member Benefits page.

What's new at BA?

Entrepreneurial Activity Climbed in 2008 – According to a recent article in the Wall St. Journal, 2008’s economic downturn recession churned out more entrepreneurs. The Kauffman Foundation released its annual “Index of Entrepreneurial Activity,” a comprehensive report that tracks U.S. entrepreneurship rates and trends. It shows entrepreneurship rates rose to .32% in 2008 – meaning that an average of 32 of every 100,000 Americans started new ventures each month. That’s a slight increase over 2007’s 0.3% rate–and the highest rate since Kauffman started tracking new business formation rates in 1996. There were several interesting developments which are summarized below:

The percentage of new entrepreneurs starting businesses deemed as having “high income potential”—such as accounting, real estate or high-tech firms –decreased slightly last year, while those with low- or medium-income-producing potential rose suggesting that more people are turning to entrepreneurship out of necessity (they may have limited job opportunities and start businesses to generate income rather than to chase a hot opportunity). In recessions, the numbers of “necessity entrepreneurs” tend to rise given lagging job markets.
The construction industry, which was among those that shed the most jobs last year given the sector’s woes, saw the highest level of entrepreneurial activity and the services industry saw the second highest number of new entrepreneurs.
Immigrants continued to form new businesses at significantly higher rates than the U.S.-born. Latinos showed the biggest increase in entrepreneurship rates of any racial group, a trend that started in 2005. By contrast, African Americans’ business creation rate fell slightly in 2008.
Entrepreneurship among both men and women continued to increase, though women’s entrepreneurship levels returned to their 2005 levels of 0.24% after declining the past few years. Men continue to have a much higher entrepreneurial rate – 0.42% — than women.
Older adults surveyed, ages 55 to 64, saw the biggest increase in new entrepreneurship rates in 2008, climbing to 0.36% from 0.31% in 2007.
Americans who never graduated from high school were far more likely to start new businesses in 2008, compared with those with a college degree. Business formation rates for those without high-school diplomas rose to 0.48% from 0.42%, while they dropped to 0.30% from 0.31% for college graduates.

Overall, Kauffman’s data suggests the recession is helping spur entrepreneurship, but not necessarily for the best reasons. Necessity entrepreneurs often face an uphill battle, since they may lack the financial resources, risk tolerance or innate entrepreneurial drive of self-selected “opportunity” entrepreneurs. Still, some of the best ideas can be bred out of necessity and entrepreneurs of any flavor contribute to economic growth, innovation and job creation in the U.S.

Immediate Savings with T-Mobile – Looking for a quick way to roll back some of your mobile telecom costs? How about the T-Mobile@Home program? It uses a broadband Internet connection to provide unlimited nationwide calling with great sound quality from home. What’s even better is that you can use your existing home phones, all you need is the T-Mobile@Home HiPort wireless router and the T-Mobile@Home service plan. It works with any standard touch-tone phone, so switching is easy and you can even keep your existing number! Take advantage of special discounts on an array of personal T-Mobile services, including 10% off rate plans, waived activation fee and handset discounts.

UPS - Big Brown Offers Tips on Becoming “Green Efficient” To deliver 15.8 million documents and packages around the world every day like UPS does, you have to be an efficiency expert. UPS has learned that efficiency is key to being green inside and outside the office. And you don’t have to be a large corporation to make a big difference in the environment – and to your bottom line. In a business world where “going green” is more than just a trend, the simple changes to become environmentally efficient are more important than ever. These small steps can be multiplied by persuading your co-workers to adopt the same environmentally friendly and cost-efficient changes.

UPS Tip #1 - Sweat the Small Stuff: Client Service is Critical in Tough Times – At a time when companies are actively seeking ways to cut budgets, client service is more important than ever. To maintain business in tough times, we cannot afford to overlook even the smallest details, from how well a receptionist greets clients to how reliable our shipping company is. While it may seem like a small thing, finding a shipper that consistently delivers all documents, from mortgage to insurance paperwork, on time, is essential to keep customers happy. And when budgets are tight, clients remain loyal to partners that deliver excellent customer care. Here’s why shipping matters to your bottom line and how UPS fills that need:

Firms rely on on-time document delivery to keep projects running on time. The delayed arrival of plans, contracts, and other important materials can bring projects to a rapid halt.
A new study (Dec. 2008) revealed by global management consulting company, Accenture, found that customer service ranks above price as a global driver for customer retention.
To win new business, firms must meet deadlines for proposals, bids and closings on time, every time. Late documents can mean lost business.
Companies can incur additional fees if a shipment’s address information is incorrect. Address correction charges range from $8 to $10, so just two errors a week can cost a firm more than $1,000 per year in excess charges.

HP: How to Recycle Old Equipment – Many of our members want to purge their work and home environments of out-dated electronic equipment. These old systems take up storage space and if not disposed of properly, can become a liability. HP offers two solutions that address these issues.

Buy Back program: Members can get a quote on any HP or non-HP equipment that they hope to sell (members do not have to buy HP equipment in order to participate in this program).
Recycling program: If the equipment is too old and has no residual value, HP offers a recycling program for both HP and non-HP equipment. Members can get a quote using the above link. There is a fee for recycling and HP does offer packaging and shipping services at an additional cost. If the equipment does have residual value, the “quote tool” will indicate as such and members can then use the Buy Back program tool to determine the value.
Visit our HP member site – and check out HP’s energy efficient replacement workstations.

HP - The Most Baffling IT Terms Unmasked – When talking or reading about technology, it can sometimes feel as if you need to know a completely foreign language. Not only are many of the words confusing, but the use (some might say the overuse) of acronyms can further complicate the issue. According to the results of a survey conducted by IT recruitment consultancy Computer People, 75 percent of respondents admitted that they waste over an hour a week finding out what something means so they can complete their work. Lost productivity isn’t the only problem. In a VIA Networks survey of small and mid-sized businesses, over 26 percent said that confusing technical jargon had led them to make the wrong purchasing decision. HP will help you cut through the confusion!

The Global Language Monitor (GLM) analyzes and catalogues the latest trends in language the world over, and each year the organization compiles a list of the “Top Ten Most Confusing Yet Frequently Cited Tech Words”. We’ve taken some of the terms from their list, added a few of our own, and given them all plain definitions.

VoIP: A T-Mobile survey found that one in ten respondents thought VoIP can improve visibility for the visually impaired! It actually stands for Voice over Internet Protocol, and literally refers to the ability to transmit the voice over the Internet.
Petaflop: This is a word you’ll probably see in conjunction with discussions of supercomputing. A petaflop can be expressed as a thousand trillion floating point operations per second; it is a measure of performance for the fastest computers in the world.
ASP: This one is particularly tricky because it’s an acronym with two meanings. An Active Server Page is an HTML page that includes one or more scripts (small embedded programs) that are processed on a Microsoft® Web server before the page is sent to the user. An Application Service Provider is a business that provides computer-based services to customers over a network.
Kernel: This is the central component of most computer operating systems, responsible for managing the system's resources and the communication between hardware and software components.
Megahertz (MHz): This is unit of measurement used when determining a computer’s processing speed. It literally means one million cycles per second. Accordingly, Gigahertz (GHz) and Terahertz (THz) equal one billion and one trillion cycles respectively.
Deduplication: This is a method of reducing storage needs by eliminating redundant data from a device. Deduplication is also sometimes known as "intelligent compression" or "single-instance storage".
Robust: This is probably one of the most commonly used, yet least understood, terms in IT marketing materials. A “robust” product can be one that doesn't break or fail easily; for example, an operating system in which any individual application can fail without disturbing the operating system or other applications can be said to be robust. Robust is also sometimes used to mean a product or solutions designed with a full range of capabilities.

The Future of Video Conferencing - Integrated Communications – Science-fiction fans have long wished for life-sized communication devices that create a real-time image of the person/alien/robot you are talking with. Recently, holographic video technology has begun to surface, although at present the price means it’s restricted to only the wealthiest companies. More realistic options when you want a face-to-face with clients across town (or the galaxy) are video conferencing and telepresence setups (see HP’s Halo Solutions). In addition, soaring fuel prices and our growing awareness of our carbon footprint, are encouraging the fast adoption of video conferencing among big and small companies. Some businesses have even taken the line that if a video conference is possible, they won’t travel long distances for a meeting. The advantages of video conferencing are obvious. As the old saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. By being able to see each other, participants benefit from improved understanding and communication. Productivity goes up, travel costs are removed, and the time spent driving or flying to meetings is slashed dramatically.

The benefits offered by video conferencing are soon to be taken to a new level by technologies like motion tracking, facial recognition and simulation, intelligent audio technologies, handheld and full-scale holographic devices, 3D monitors, stereographic camera setups, and entire-room display technologies. Recent months have already seen the introduction of digital projectors into mobile phones. While many of these technologies sound quite far-fetched, a lot of them will be available for regular business use in the near future. And like most technological breakthroughs, with time many of them will also find their way into our homes. Friends and family living overseas could virtually walk in and talk with you – or share their living rooms in full detail.

While holograms and other such technologies are still out of reach for most, video conferencing systems like Halo are helping organizations hold more engaging long-distance meetings that lift productivity while reducing costs. The top-end products can include life-sized screens, crisp pictures, surround sound and even operating technicians.

A far more attractively priced option is one of the latest notebook PCs. The sleek HP Compaq 2710p Notebook Tablet PC (visit our HP site for a closer look). It makes video conferencing affordable for smaller businesses. With a dual-microphone array and built-in webcam, you will quickly and easily set up time-saving face-to-face meetings. Collaboration and communication can be improved effortlessly, travel costs removed in an instant. You’ll also be able to save on your web and tele-conferencing long distance cost with another BA partner, Integrated Communications.

Save at the Gas Pump With Our New BA Member Benefit - Holiday StationStores – Looking for some respite from the high price of gas? Sign up for this well-timed new member benefit. The program is built around a Holiday StationStores purchase card that gives you fuel rebates on every gallon purchased, plus $2.00 off car washes. Visit our Member Benefits page for more details and to sign up.