Xerox Canada (NYSE: XRX) introduced two multifunction printers this week aimed at small and medium-sized businesses. With that the Toronto, Ont.-based subsidiary is supporting this down market play with a new pricing structure, improved environmental features and new paper offering.
Available through Xerox reseller channel, the Phaser 3300 costs as low as $649, while the the WorkCentre 4260 starts at $3,599. Both machines offer low cost scanning, faxing, copying and printing in one to appeal to the SMB market.
M.J. Bulmer, national marketing manger for desktop products, said the small and medium-sized business market presents opportunities for the channel worth $44 billion worldwide.
“We have really been exploring that area to develop more products,” Bulmer said, “and we are committed to developing office products to meet this niche whether it is affordable, green or multifunction.”
The Phaser 3300 has an engine speed, at 30 pages per minute, is better than previous models. First page printing take approximately 8.5 seconds, she said. In comparison to older models that printing 22 pages per minute with the first page in 10 second.
Neither of the laser printers print in colour, but the WorkCentre 4260 scans in colour to maintain image quality for saving or e-mailing to colleagues.
“One thing about the small and medium sized business market is that research has shown that colour is important to 58 per cent of companies,” Bulmer said. We are focusing on more affordable colour.”
The WorkCentre 4260 is also designed to improve productivity with its ‘print-around technology,’ which processes a queue of printing orders at once and skips over printing jobs that cannot be completed due to an empty paper tray.
The printer also uses ‘follow-you-print technology,’ allowing workers who travel across a large geographical network to send their document to the closest printer by inputting a code.
The WorkCentre 4260 is an improvement on Xerox’s WorkCentre 4150. It brings the speed up from 45 pages per minute to 55 and holds up to 3,100 sheets of paper.
The printers also have a duplex sheet-handler; helping small and medium-sized businesses cut costs and conserve paper.
“We encourage customers to make waste-free choices,” Bulmer said, “the majority of our printers have built-in, power-down options and we strongly promote the use of automatic duplex.”
The Phaser 3300MFP and the WorkCentre 4260 are both Energy Star certified and sold with high-capacity toner cartridges and a toner-saving mode to help smaller businesses deal with high administrative costs and to reduce waste.
Bulmer said Xerox’s green strategy is similar for both small and medium sized businesses and large enterprise.
“Ninety-seven per cent of Xerox products are Eco-logo certified,” Bulmer said.
Xerox is ahead of the curve when it comes to reusing old equipment, she said, the company diverted two billion pounds of electronic waste from landfills in 2007.
They are also promoting a high-yield business paper, that is lighter and subsequently cheaper to mail, helping cut costs for all businesses and which uses 97 per cent of a tree, rather than traditional paper, which uses only 40 per cent.
One Canadian bank is taking note of Xerox’s paper changes. The Royal Bank of Canada recently made Xerox one of their exclusive paper partners.
“Our key plank is to help businesses of all sizes find solutions for their own internal strategy,” Bulmer said. “This is just one example of an enterprise wanting to improve their own environmental policy, and using suppliers to help.”
