Entrepreneurial

CORRECTED: the Universal College Application was created by ApplicationsOnline LLC and not the NCAA as was previously stated.

With President Obama’s small business bill stalled in Congress, big business is trying to pick up the slack.

Six of America’s largest corporations – IBM, AT&T, Bank of America, Citigroup, Pfizer and UPS – have banded together to create a “one-stop shop” for small and mid-sized businesses looking to sell to them and take advantage of the nearly $150 billion awarded collectively in contracts each year.

“We figured the major way that large companies could affect growth in small or medium-sized enterprises is through our supply chain spending,” said Stanley Litow, IBM’s VP of Corporate Citizenship & Corporate Affairs, who started the process of developing a Web-based platform where small businesses could apply for contracts two months ago.

Litow said the website – Supplier Connection (www.supplier-connection.net) – won’t launch until next year, but the hope is it will streamline the application process in the same way the Universal College Application allows students to apply to multiple universities at once.

Last year was a record for small businesses, which scooped up more than $93 billion in federal contracts, a $10 billion jump from a year earlier, according to a report by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).

It’s good news to be sure, but critics are already grumbling that the government only allotted 21.5 percent of its promised 23 percent target to small businesses for fiscal 2008.

Key among their complaints:

* High costs: Small businesses often opt out of the running for government contracts for fear that they can’t absorb the proposal costs that can run as high as $25,000 to $500,000, The Washington Post reports.