Buyers Access, the leader in multifamily group purchasing, announces today the addition of a new national supplier, Ecologic Furniture. Ecologic Furniture is a full-service student housing manufacturer that specializes in creating sustainable, durable, and affordable furniture. Ecologic has created a culture and support system to offer world class customer service as well as an intelligence-rich design and consultative environment for clients making them a true partner to the industry. For over 25 years, Ecologic Industries has been a pioneer in sustainable business practices, recycling, and green manufacturing. Ecologic uses environmentally friendly materials and manufacturing processes. Ecologic is, by far, the leader in sustainable furniture for the student housing industry. “Ecologic is excited about the new partnership with Buyers Access. The partnership unites two companies with strong histories of student housing product and service innovation. Applying our combined expertise, together, we can address the distinct needs of providing expanded student housing products and service offerings to Buyers Access members,” Dan Goldman, CEO, EcoLogic.  Buyers Access continues to partner with industry-leading national suppliers that will bring state-of-the-art and environmentally friendly products to members. “I am excited about our new relationship with EcoLogic! Much like Buyers Access, EcoLogic has a value-driven model which is differentiated from their competition. They not only provide a well-designed product line with “hip” color schemes, they have the replacement parts for their product so our members can realize significant cost savings,” Phil Bassett, President and CEO, Buyers Access. “Additionally, our members can also look forward to our exclusive Buyers Access proprietary line of furniture,” says Bassett.

To find out more about how you can benefit from being a Buyer Access member and access a national supplier network, please contact us at the phone number and/or website below.

About Buyers Access
Buyers Access is the nation’s leading Multifamily Group Purchasing and Cost Control specialist for the multifamily housing industry. We take an active role as your business partner and provide full service solutions to help your business maximize the value of your real estate. Since 1986, Buyers Access has helped thousands of properties reduce their operating costs and become more efficient. Through the use of our operational expertise, properties have added millions of dollars to their real estate value. Celebrating 28 years, Buyers Access looks forward to meeting new challenges in the multifamily industry. For more information, please contact Buyers Access at www.buyersaccess.com or call 1.800.445.9169

Media Contact:
Michelle Potter
Director of Marketing
Office: 253.517.5540
Email: mpotter@buyersaccess.com

Holidays are quickly approaching and so are the opportunities to be involved in your community. A recent NAA Industry Insider article listed a few top owners in the multifamily industry that are participating in holiday events that help build community. Landmark Apartment Trust of America, Pillar Properties, Crest at Congressional Plaza and Avalon Bay are all taking part in supporting and/or donating to a charitable cause. If you are a Buyers Access member and your apartment community is supporting causes that are meaningful to you this holiday season, please make sure to share them with us on our Facebook page. Kudos to all those keeping the holiday spirit alive!

“How can I reduce the amount of money we spend on ‘emergency’ purchases?” A great question often asked by Multifamily Housing Professionals.  Buyers Access is here to help with practical ways to either mitigate, or greatly reduce these expenses.

Have a plan in place. This includes having a list of approved emergency vendors. Failure to do so can lead to inefficiencies such as higher costs for standard items, use of inferior substitute items, use of unauthorized vendors, trips off site, and overtime charges. One recent analysis performed for a Buyers Access client revealed an increase of over 20% charged by the use an unauthorized vendor. This increase included the extra time involved in an offsite purchase, and reconciling an invoice to an unauthorized vendor. How can this drag on NOI be avoided?

Be realistic about what can and should be reduced. True emergency spend will never go away 100%, but in many cases the term “emergency” is used only to help justify an unplanned purchase. Establish ground rules, as to what constitutes a true emergency. Consultants at Buyers Access have identified several ways to improve efficiency, increase service levels, and reduce the incidences of “False Alarms”. Once the ground rules have been set, communicate the plan to your team, and designate a leader to go to with questions.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. One practical way to reduce emergency expenses is to perform scheduled property inspections. These can detect potential emergencies waiting to happen.  Key vendors are invaluable in this process. Buyers Access members have the benefit of making one call to our Member Services team to schedule qualified inspections by HVAC, plumbing, and electrical contractors. 

Practice makes perfect. Review emergency procedures on a consistent basis. Our Account Management Team, can assist with this review, and identify additional solutions to further reduce costs associated with emergencies. Ultimately, these steps not only improve your NOI, but your residents’ experience through more timely resolution to their requests.

To learn more about other cost reducing strategies that Buyers Access can offer, contact the Buyers Access Sales Team today orclick here for a Free Consultation!

Buyers Access, the leader in multifamily group purchasing, announces today the addition of a new national supplier, Leonardo247: Intelligent Property Operations Systems. Leonardo247 is servicing the multifamily industry with easy-to-use cloud-based software that is radically changing the way managers operate the multi-million dollar assets put in their care. Site managers adhere to a massive number of operational protocols that need to be followed from day to day. Oftentimes site managers need to refer to an “operational binder” which has proven to be highly ineffective. Teams in the field cannot efficiently utilize these resources, leaving important policies and procedures unattended and ignored. Leonardo247 automates all of these operational protocols by utilizing its own database of best practices combined with the company’s own customized policies and creating simple, trackable checklists which are presented every day to the operations staff.  “Pairing Leonardo247 with Buyers Access creates a single destination for maintenance teams where they can receive instruction on everything which needs to be done on-site and then purchase the tools and supplies they need to complete the work. That is unprecedented in the multifamily industry and we’re excited to partner with Buyers Access to make that happen,” Daniel Cunningham, Founder & CEO, Leonardo247.  Buyers Access continues to partner with industry-leading companies that will bring innovative means to improve operating income and process efficiency to members. This newest partnership with Leonardo247 provides additional product and service offerings to Buyers Access Members. “We are very excited to work with Daniel Cunningham, Founder & CEO of Leonardo247, and his team to bring our current and future members a service that is a first of its kind: property operations software. We look forward to working with our members to bring a phenomenal solution on property operations through Leonardo247’s exceptional cloud-based software,” Phil Bassett, President and CEO, Buyers Access.

About Buyers Access
Buyers Access is the nation’s leading Multifamily Group Purchasing and Cost Control specialist for the multifamily housing industry. We take an active role as your business partner and provide full service solutions to help your business maximize the value of your real estate. Since 1986, Buyers Access has helped thousands of properties reduce their operating costs and become more efficient. Through the use of our operational expertise, properties have added millions of dollars to their real estate value. Celebrating 28 years, Buyers Access looks forward to meeting new challenges in the multifamily industry. For more information, please contact Buyers Access at www.buyersaccess.com or call 1.800.445.9169

Media Contact:
Michelle Niemeyer
Director of Marketing
Office: 253.517.5540
Email: mniemeyer@buyersaccess.com

Earlier this year Buyers Access deployed Birst, a business intelligence (BI) platform to increase the value of its purchasing program for both its property management company clients and its suppliers. The latest article on http://www.naahq.org/connect/libraries/revenue-management/customer-focus-crm-business-intelligence#sthash.hxr37Cje.dpuf expands on how BI tools and customer relationship management (CRM) systems in the multifamily industry are proving to be a necessity.

Contact a Buyers Access Sales Director or your dedicated Account Manager to understand how Buyers Access already leverages an integrated CRM and BI infrastructure.

http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20130502-904155.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - May 2, 2013) - Birst Inc., the leader in Cloud BI, today announced that Buyers Access, the leader in multifamily group purchasing for the multifamily housing industry, is deploying Birst's business intelligence (BI) platform to increase the value of its purchasing program for both its property management company clients and its suppliers.

With more than 650,000 units of purchasing power and a team of industry experts, Buyers Access has helped thousands of multifamily properties reduce costs and become more efficient. To do so, Buyers Access works with its network of suppliers to provide properties with optimal pricing and an economical purchasing process. Using Birst, Buyers Access will be able to identify properties that are not leveraging the program as planned. Additionally, Buyers Access will be able to notify suppliers in its network of opportunities to support property purchasing and increase sales. Birst will also provide Buyers Access with greater insight into client profitability, as well as the ability to create more accurate forecasts that will enable the organization to optimize its budgeting and planning processes.

"Moving from our current, SQL reporting environment to Birst is a game changer for our business," said Jeff Peterson, Director of Financial Reporting and Analysis, Buyers Access. "With Birst, we can design an entirely new report in two days instead of two weeks, two months, or even longer. We're empowering our business users to quickly make meaningful decisions that improve our business results -- as well as those of our clients and suppliers -- without the constant involvement of IT."

In a move to utilize technology instead of owning it, Buyers Access began a company-wide initiative to switch from on-premise applications to technology deployed in the Cloud. The organization implemented Salesforce.com to manage its sales and customer service activities, but continued to utilize its legacy, on-premise, SQL-based reporting tools when it discovered that its default data visualization and analytical capabilities were unable to meet the company's analytic needs. To fill the gap and complete its move to Cloud technology, Buyers Access evaluated a number of analytical solutions and selected Birst due to the overall flexibility and enterprise-caliber capabilities of its comprehensive, Cloud-based BI platform. With its pre-built data connector, Birst easily and seamlessly integrated with Salesforce.com and is providing Buyers Access with single sign-on (SSO) to increase efficiency. Additionally, Birst's automated back-end, including data warehouse and ETL, will allow Buyers Access to quickly and easily combine and analyze data from additional sources in the future.

"As the only comprehensive BI platform born in the cloud, Birst enables organizations to lower their total cost of ownership and repurpose valuable IT resources without sacrificing analytical depth and breadth," said Brad Peters, CEO of Birst. "Compared to simple data discovery tools and costly legacy BI, Birst is a powerful, economical alternative that supplies the insight organizations need to solve real business problems, fast."

To find out more information about Birst's solutions and how they can help your business succeed, visit www.birst.com.

About Birst

Birst is the only enterprise-caliber Business Intelligence platform born in the cloud. Less costly and more agile than Legacy BI and more powerful than Data Discovery, Birst is engineered with an automated data warehouse and rich, visual analytics, to give meaning to data -- all types and sizes. Coupled with the agility of the Cloud, Birst gives business teams the ability to solve real problems. Fast. Find out why Gartner named Birst a Challenger in its most recent BI Magic Quadrant and why more than a thousand businesses rely on Birst for their analytic needs. Learn to think fast at www.birst.com and join the conversation @birstbi.

For more information, contact:

Stacey Burbach

Point Communications Group for Birst, Inc.

602.279.1137

Buyers Access, the leader in multifamily group purchasing, announces today the redesign and re-launch of its corporate marketing and e-Commerce websites.  The Buyers Access new corporate website incorporates a dynamic look and feel, user friendly navigation, and valuable video content to create a more interactive experience for visitors. The newly developed site-wide search engine helps visitors find specific information with ease.  The site also contains a single source login feature at the upper right hand side of each page which allows members to access the new e-Commerce site seamlessly. In addition, the new website is also mobile-configured, compatible with all types of smartphone/tablet devices and accommodates for simple fingertip navigation. “The website design showcases Buyers Access’ comprehensive purchasing solutions, success stories, rich blog content, and provides a deeper look into our core capabilities,” says Michelle Niemeyer, Director of Marketing, Buyers Access. “We want to make it easier for prospects, members, and suppliers to find our smart purchasing solutions online and become more educated about how Buyers Access can support their strategic initiatives.”

The Buyers Access new e-Commerce website offers complete commerce automation (purchase orders, invoices, product and contract maintenance) and reporting solutions with intelligent direction and feedback for purchasing decisions. Enhancements to the e-Commerce site include but are not limited to: several options to locate and order products, ability to compare product across multiple vendors, custom site configuration, refined approval processes, electronic invoicing, accounts payable system administration and budget management. “Our new e-Commerce site evolved out of listening to our members’ needs and adapting our business to address those needs,” says Phil Bassett, President and CEO, Buyers Access.  “Our members now have a configurable ‘procure-to-pay’ platform that has the benefits of our bigger competitors at a fraction of the cost. Business Intelligence analytics and reporting is a key component to our platform, further enabling our members to get the most out of their spend.”

Buyers Access is offering webinars and various web-based training for members on the new e-Commerce website. For more information about upcoming training sessions please contact your dedicated account manager.

About Buyers Access
Buyers Access is the nation’s leading Multifamily Group Purchasing and Cost Control specialist for the multifamily housing industry. We take an active role as your business partner and provide full service solutions to help your business maximize the value of your real estate. Since 1986, Buyers Access has helped thousands of properties reduce their operating costs and become more efficient. Through the use of our operational expertise, properties have added millions of dollars to their real estate value. Celebrating 28 years, Buyers Access looks forward to meeting new challenges in the multifamily industry. For more information, please contact Buyers Access at www.buyersaccess.com or call 1.800.445.9169

For more information, please contact Buyers Access at www.buyersaccess.com or call 1.800.445.9169

Media Contact:
Michelle Potter
Director of Marketing
Office: 253.517.5540
Email: mpotter@buyersaccess.com
 

Buyers Access, the leader in multifamily group purchasing, announces today the addition of a new national supplier, Net Vendor. NetVendor is a vendor compliance and risk management company servicing the multifamily industry. The NetVendor Multifamily Property Management Solution is a real-time solution that automates vendor compliance for the properties that you own and/or manage. “Buyers Access and our members will realize a tremendous benefit in supplier management in our new partnership with NetVendor. They bring a unique virtual solution that enables Buyers Access and its members to coordinate the critical components of risk management with suppliers. We are looking forward to the possibilities in our new partnership with NetVendor, which will be mutually beneficial in line with our overall solutions strategy,” says Phil Bassett, President and CEO of Buyers Access. “Our partnership is something we are really excited about.  This strategic alignment provides our common clients with solutions that improve the bottom line in a single user experience,” says Anthony Renaldo, CEO of NetVendor.

To find out more about how you can benefit from being a Buyer Access member and access a national supplier network, please contact us at the phone number and/or website below.

About Buyers Access
Buyers Access is the nation’s leading Multifamily Group Purchasing and Cost Control specialist for the multifamily housing industry. We take an active role as your business partner and provide full service solutions to help your business maximize the value of your real estate. Since 1986, Buyers Access has helped thousands of properties reduce their operating costs and become more efficient. Through the use of our operational expertise, properties have added millions of dollars to their real estate value. Celebrating 28 years, Buyers Access looks forward to meeting new challenges in the multifamily industry. For more information, please contact Buyers Access at www.buyersaccess.com or call 1.800.445.9169

Media Contact:
Michelle Niemeyer
Director of Marketing
Office: 253.517.5540
Email: mniemeyer@buyersaccess.com

Buyers Access, the leader in multifamily group purchasing, announces today the addition of a new national supplier, SemaConnect. SemaConnect is a leading developer and producer of smart networked electric vehicle (EV) charging stations and sophisticated electric vehicle software for station owners and EV drivers.  "We're excited to join hands with Buyers Access and bring our electric vehicle charging stations to multifamily properties nationwide. Electric vehicles are seeing significant sales in large metros, and multifamily residents with electric cars in these metros need charging stations to be able to refuel their vehicles.  For owners of multifamily housing, electric vehicle charging stations are the new amenity that can help differentiate their property, enhance property value, and provide a new revenue source,” says Mahi Reddy, Founder and CEO of SemaConnect. “Our new partnership with SemaConnect is very exciting for us, building on our thought leadership for our customers. Sustainability is a key initiative in multifamily and also with our team here at Buyers Access. We believe that hybrid and electric vehicles are going to continue to become more integrated into mainstream America. This is especially true with the ground-breaking work being done in vehicle battery technology,” says Phil Bassett, President and CEO of Buyers Access.

To find out more about how you can benefit from being a Buyer Access member and access a national supplier network, please contact us at the phone number and/or website below.

About Buyers Access
Buyers Access is the nation’s leading Purchasing and Cost Control specialist for the multifamily housing industry. We take an active role as your business partner and provide full service solutions to help your business maximize the value of your real estate. Since 1986, Buyers Access has helped thousands of properties reduce their operating costs and become more efficient. Through the use of our operational expertise, properties have added millions of dollars to their real estate value. Celebrating 25 years, Buyers Access looks forward to meeting new challenges in the multifamily industry. For more information, please contact Buyers Access at www.buyersaccess.com or call 1.800.445.9169

Media Contact:
Michelle Potter
Director of Marketing
Office: 253.517.5540
Email: mpotter@buyersaccess.com

Buyers Access, the leader in multifamily group purchasing, announces today the addition of a new national supplier, Cintas Corporation. Cintas Corporation provides highly specialized services to businesses of all types primarily throughout North America. "We are very pleased to announce this new partnership with Buyers Access.  We see this as a true "win-win" agreement for both Buyers Access members and our Cintas locations throughout North America.  By partnering together, our 30,000 employee-partners can go to work on taking care of members' needs for many essential operating solutions including employee uniforms, tile and carpet deep cleaning, entrance mats, cleaning solutions, fire safety preparedness, first aid and safety products, and confidential-secure document destruction.  At Cintas, our job is to enhance our customers' images while helping them maintain a safe, clean and secure business,” says, Bill Carigan, Vice President of Strategic Markets, Cintas Corporation. Cintas is the recognized leader in uniform and common area logo’d floorcovering rental, purchase and laundering. “Adding them to our program makes complete sense to us and is long overdue. Our customers have been seeking a solution in this area. A little known fact about Cintas is that they have a full suite of products and services, ranging from fire protection to document management. We are very excited to pursue these opportunities with Cintas’ national team to benefit our members,” says Phil Bassett, President and CEO, Buyers Access.

To find out more about how you can benefit from being a Buyer Access member and access a national supplier network, please contact us at the phone number and/or website below.

About Buyers Access

Buyers Access is the nation’s leading Multifamily Group Purchasing and Cost Control specialist for the multifamily housing industry. We take an active role as your business partner and provide full service solutions to help your business maximize the value of your real estate. Since 1986, Buyers Access has helped thousands of properties reduce their operating costs and become more efficient. Through the use of our operational expertise, properties have added millions of dollars to their real estate value. Celebrating 28 years, Buyers Access looks forward to meeting new challenges in the multifamily industry. For more information, please contact Buyers Access at www.buyersaccess.com or call 1.800.445.9169

Media Contact:
Michelle Niemeyer
Director of Marketing
Office: 253.517.5540
Email: mniemeyer@buyersaccess.com