As mentioned earlier, the line of printers is intended for business purposes and they do mesh well with business and IT environments. The Pro5500 and Pro4000 printers are definitely built for fast and heavy duty scanning and printing. The new line proudly exudes astonishing new speeds that surpasses previous models.

The Pro5500 model features a single pass, duplex, auto document feeder, which gives the user the ability to quickly feed printable and scannable documents. Additionally the feeder has a capacity of up to 50 sheets of document. An awesome time saver, the machine has the ability to simultaneously scan two sides of a given document saving a lot of work too. The device is also able to fit a variety of paper sizes as well.

The printers have an outstanding print quality which truly surpasses those qualities of lesser models. Featuring clear, vivid colors, deep black and katana blade sharp grays, These colors are made possible by Lexmark’s new pigment based Vizix Pro ink. This new ink is now used in both standard models and the new models as well.

The Pro5500 features a sleek 4.3 inch touchscreen menu for quick and easy command navigation; you can even download new software and updates to the systems. Lexmark says these machines are truly the most business efficient line of printers yet. Lexmark Executive Vice President, Marty Canning had this to say about the company’s new line:

“The tremendous business-class capabilities we’ve integrated into our new business inkjets, along with a compelling value proposition, make them viable alternatives for demanding, heavy use workgroups, our customers working in shared use environments, such as doctor offices and branch banks, will find that the OfficeEdge Series is an ideal choice for managing their workflows and professional-quality color documents.”

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One of the many challenges of corporate social media is that it never stops evolving. New tools, applications, features, and strategies emerge just about every day. It can be tough keep up. That’s why constantly learning has to be part of the strategy as a whole. 

WebProNews spoke with José Chacón, Lexmark’s Director of Marketing in North America, at BlogWorld & New Media Expo a couple weeks ago. While he and the company were at the conference to launch a new product (a pretty cool printer/scanner with social media apps), he said they were also at the event to learn. A lot of the time at the event, he said, was just spent talking to people and learning. 

"We’re still learning. The organization has been fully open and is embracing it [social media], and I think that’s why we’re here," he told us. 

"Being such a large organization, you need to get a lot of people comfortable," said Chacón. "It’s something that’s taken us a while, but I think now, they recognize the opportunity – the value. They see what we can do with it and primarily, it’s to serve our customers better."

Do you have partnerships? Even just other businesses your friendly with? What’s to stop you from teaming up to help each other out in the social media space? It could be good for all parties involved (including the customers). 

"A lot of the things that we’ve done, and we started very…like a lot of other companies, with you know, using social media more from a corporate standpoint…using Facebook, posting videos on YouTube…probably in the last 18 months is when we started really doing a lot more with our retail partners, with some of the other brands that we’ve worked with that are part of the value propositions…they’re also involved in social media, so we’ve been working together," he said. "So they’ve been helping us, we’ve been helping them. We want to make sure that if they are helping us, that we give back as well. So I think it’s been a pretty neat experience."

Such teamwork could be particularly helpful for businesses with fewer resources to dedicate to social media, and if you want a complete strategy (that is to maximize effectiveness), it’s going to take a lot of time and/or resources. 

At this point, you’ve really got to have some kind of social presence if you want to find success in online marketing. "As big companies, big brands…if you want to maintain viability in the marketplace, you need to participate," said Chacón. 

If you’re not a big brand, you’re going to need to participate even more.  

The company says the new toolbar will help save expensive ink. It’s available for recent versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox, for Windows versions after Windows 2000.

The toolbar allows users to print a portion of a webpage they have highlighted directly, text or images. Users can schedule automatic printing of webpages and tell the toolbar to print in black ink or text-only.

The neatest part of the toolbar, though, is that it removes all the links and junk you don’t want printed, saving ink, time, paper, and frustration.

This a nice move from Lexmark from marketing perspective. The company has been plagued by flagging sales recently; the offshoot of IBM’s old printing division, Lexmark enjoyed a decade of positive financial quarters.

Rivals like HP and Canon have outshined it lately, though. The toolbar creates an opportunity for the company to revitalize its brand by making the brand more ubiquitous on the Net while providing a positive experience for customers.  
 

Although shares of Lexmark tanked from $70 to $28 per share, the stock price began to rally after the company disclosed a substantially better fourth quarter than expected.

The numbers reflect a shift to more business-related purchases taking place, and less business on the consumer side. Lexmark said their 2007 business segment revenue hit $3 billion, a 5 percent rise from 2006. Consumer business fell 12 percent to $1.97 billion.

Though fourth-quarter earnings of $1.04 per share lagged Q4 2006 by a penny, they still surpassed Wall Street expectations of 58 cents per share. Lexmark’s key to continued success will require targeting high-usage customers in the small office/home office (SOHO) market, and larger customers for laser multi-function printers.

An inside source lamented one miss by Lexmark management. Recently, H-P acquired Exstream Software, a company in Lexmark’s backyard. Exstream’s enterprise document automation software, Dialogue, could have been an asset in Lexmark’s attempts to further boost its business segment sales.