document_title: Film colorization

question_text: who began the process of computer colorization of old black and white movies

text: Film colorization

text: Early techniques[edit]

text: Hand colorization[edit]

text: This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (October 2011)

text: The first film colorization methods were hand done by individuals. For example, at least 4% of George Méliès's output, including some prints of A Trip to the Moon from 1902 and other major films such as The Kingdom of the Fairies, The Impossible Voyage, and The Barber of Seville were individually hand-colored by Elisabeth Thuillier's coloring lab in Paris.[1] Thuillier, a former colorist of glass and celluloid products, directed a studio of two hundred people painting directly on film stock with brushes, in the colors she chose and specified; each worker was assigned a different color in assembly line style, with more than twenty separate colors often used for a single film. On average, Thuillier's lab produced about sixty hand-colored copies of a film A Trip to the Moon, but only one copy is known to exist.[2] The first full-length feature film made by a hand-colored process was The Miracle of 1912.

text: The process was always done by hand, sometimes using a stencil cut from a second print of the film, such as the Pathécolor process. As late as the 1920s, hand coloring processes were used for individual shots in Greed (1924) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925) (both utilizing the Handschiegl color process); and rarely, an entire feature-length movie such as Cyrano de Bergerac (1925) and The Last Days of Pompeii (1926).

text: These colorization methods were employed until effective color film processes were developed. During the late 1960s and the early 1970s, black-and-white Betty Boop, Mickey Mouse, and Looney Tunes cartoons were redistributed in color. Supervised by Fred Ladd, color was added by tracing the original black-and-white frames onto new animation cels, and then adding color to the new cels in South Korea. This technique considerably degrades the quality and timing of the original animation, to the extent that some animation was not carried over or mistakenly altered. The most recent redrawn colorized black-and-white cartoons are the Fleischer Studios/Famous Studios' Popeye cartoons, the Harman-Ising Merrie Melodies, and MGM's The Captain and the Kids cartoons, which were colorized in 1987 for airing on the Turner networks.[3] With computer technology, studios were able to add color to black-and-white films by digitally tinting single objects in each frame of the film until it was fully colorized (the first authorized computer-colorizations of B&W cartoons were commissioned by Warner Bros. in 1990). The initial process was invented by Canadian Wilson Markle and was first used in 1970 to add color to monochrome footage of the moon from the Apollo program missions.

text: Digital colorization[edit]

text: Computerized colorization began in the 1970s with a process developed by Wilson Markle. Movies colorized using early techniques have soft contrast and fairly pale, flat, washed-out color; however, the technology has improved since the 1980s.

text: To perform digital colorization, a digitized copy of the best monochrome film print available is needed. Technicians, with the aid of computer software, associate a range of gray levels to each object, and indicate to the computer any movement of the objects within a shot. The software also is capable of sensing variations in the light level from frame to frame and correcting it if necessary. The technician selects a color for each object based on (1) common "memory" colors such as blue sky, white clouds, flesh tones and green grass, and (2) based on any known information about the movie. For example, if there are color publicity photos or props from the movie available to examine, authentic colors may be applied. (3) In the absence of any better information, the technician chooses a color that fits the gray level and that the technician feels is consistent with what a director might have chosen for the scene. The computer software then associates a variation of the basic color with each gray level in the object, while keeping intensity levels the same as in the monochrome original. The software then follows each object from frame to frame, applying the same color until the object leaves the frame. As new objects come into the frame, the technician must associate colors to each new object in the same way as described above.[4] This technique was patented in 1991.[5]

text: A major difficulty with this process is its labor-intensiveness. For example, in order to colorize a still image an artist typically begins by dividing the image into regions, and then assigning a color to each region. This approach, also known as the segmentation method, is time consuming, as the process of dividing the picture into correct segments is painstaking. This problem occurs mainly because there have been no fully automatic algorithms to identify fuzzy or complex region boundaries, such as between a subject's hair and face. Colorization of moving images also requires tracking regions as movement occurs from one frame to the next (motion compensation). There are several companies which claim to have produced automatic region-tracking algorithms.

text: Legend Films describes their core technology as pattern recognition and background compositing which moves and morphs foreground and background masks from frame to frame. In the process, backgrounds are colorized separately in a single composite frame which functions as a visual database of a cut, and includes all offset data on each camera movement. Once the foregrounds are colorized the background masks are applied frame to frame in a utility process.[clarification needed]

text: Timebrush describes a process based on neural net technology which produces saturated and crisp colors with clear lines and no apparent spill-over. It is claimed that the process is cost effective and equally suitable for low-budget colorization, as well as for prime time broadcast-quality or theatrical projection.

text: A team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Benin School of Computer Science and Engineering describe their method as an interactive process which does not require precise, manual, region detection, nor accurate tracking and is based on the simple premise that nearby pixels in space and time that have similar gray levels should also have similar colors. At the University of Minnesota, a color propagation method was developed that uses geodesic distance.[6]

text: A highly labor-intensive process, employed by the UK-based film and video colorization artist Stuart Humphryes in conjunction with video restoration company SVS Resources, was employed by the BBC in 2013 for the commercial release of two Doctor Who serials – episode one of The Mind of Evil and newly discovered monochrome footage in the Director's Cut of Terror of the Zygons. For these ventures approximately 7000 key-frames (approximately every 5th PAL video frame) were fully colorized by hand, without the use of masks, layers or the segmentation method. These were then utilised by SVS Resources to interpolate the colour across the intervening surrounding frames using a part computerized/part manual process.[7]

text: In 2017 online service Algorithmia released free-of-charge, although sample limited service that uses neural nets trained on colorized images fed to deep generative adversarial networks along with automatically generated grayscale.[1]

text: Uses of colorization[edit]

text: Partial colorization[edit]

text: The earliest form of colorization introduced limited color into a black-and-white film using dyes, as a visual effect. The earliest Edison films, most notably the Annabelle Serpentine Dance series, were also the earliest examples of colorization, done by painting aniline dyes onto the emulsion.

text: Around 1905, Pathé introduced Pathéchrome, a stencil process that required cutting one or more stencils for each film frame with the aid of a reducing pantograph.

text: In 1916, the Handschiegl Color Process was invented for Cecil B. DeMille's film Joan the Woman (1917). Another early example of the Handschiegl process can be found in Phantom of the Opera (1925), in which Lon Chaney's character can be seen wearing a bright-red cape while the rest of the scene remained monochrome. The scene was toned sepia, and then the cape was painted red, either by stencil or by matrix. Then, a sulfur solution was applied to everything but the dyed parts, turning the sepia into blue tone. The process was named after its inventor, Max Handschiegl. This effect, as well as a missing color sequence, were recreated in 1996 for a Photoplay Productions restoration by computer colorization (see below).

text: Partial colorization has also been utilized on footage shot in color to enhance commercials and broadcast television to further facilitate the director's artistic vision. As an example, Cerulean Fx provided partial colorization for Dave Matthews Band's music video The Space Between as well as Outkast's music videos Bombs Over Baghdad and Roses.

text: Restoration[edit]

text: A number of British television shows which were made in color in the early 1970s were wiped supposedly for economic reasons, but in some cases black-and-white telerecordings were made for export to countries that did not yet have color television. A notable example is the BBC's five-part Doctor Who story The Dæmons. Only one episode survived in color; the rest existed only as black-and-white film recordings. The only known color recording was a poor-quality over-the-air recording of an abridged broadcast in the United States. In the 1990s the BBC colorized the black-and-white copies by adding the color signal from the over-the-air recordings. The result was judged a success by both technicians and fans. In March 2008, it was announced[8] that new technology, which involves detecting color artifacts ("dot crawl") in high-resolution scans of black-and-white films, will be used to restore other Who episodes as well as shows like Steptoe and Son where some episodes originally produced in color only exist currently in black-and-white. However, there are no plans to use colorization on BBC programmes originally produced in black-and-white, such as the 1960s Who episodes since they have no color information available and so cannot be recovered using these methods.[9] The best one could hope for is an extrapolation of the methods used in colorizing the I Love Lucy episodes were a combination of color 8mm home-movie footage, staged publicity photos in natural color and the presence of surviving props and decorations from the show.

text: Integration[edit]

text: This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

text: Colorization is also sometimes used on historical stock footage in color movies. For instance, the film Thirteen Days uses colorized news footage from the time of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

text: The full-color feature film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004), which already made heavy use of digitally generated sets and objects, integrated black-and-white 1940s footage of Sir Laurence Olivier into scenes by colorizing him.

text: In his feature film, The Aviator (2005), Martin Scorsese seamlessly blended colorized stock footage of the Hell's Angels movie premiere with footage of the premiere's re-enactment. The colorization by Legend Films was designed to look like normal three-strip film but was then color corrected to match the two-strip look of the premiere's re-enactment. Also in The Aviator, Scorsese used colorized footage of Jane Russell from the original black-and-white film, The Outlaw and dog fight scenes from Hell's Angels.

text: Colorization examples, criticism, and controversies[edit]

text: Entertainment make-overs[edit]

text: In 1983, Hal Roach Studios became one of the first studios to venture into the business of computerized film colorization. Buying a 50 percent interest in Wilson Markle's Colorization, Inc., it began creating digitally colored versions of some of its films. Roach's Topper (1937), followed by Way Out West (1937), became the first black-and-white films to be redistributed in color using the digital colorization process,[10][11][12][13] leading to controversy. Defenders of the process noted that it would allow black-and-white films to have new audiences of people who were not used to the format. Detractors complained (among other reasons) that the process was crude and claimed that even if it were refined, it would not take into account lighting compositions chosen for black-and-white photography which would not necessarily be as effective in color.[14] Figures opposed to the process included Roger Ebert, James Stewart, John Huston, George Lucas and Woody Allen.[10]

text: Cary Grant was reportedly "very gung-ho with the outcome" of the colorization of Topper.[10] Director Frank Capra met with Wilson Markle about colorizing the perennial Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life, Meet John Doe and Lady for a Day based on Grant's enthusiasm.[10] Colorization, Inc.'s art director Brian Holmes screened ten minutes of colorized footage from It's a Wonderful Life to Capra, which led Capra to sign a contract with Colorization, Inc.[10] However, the film was believed to be in the public domain at the time, and as a result Markle and Holmes responded by returning Capra's initial investment, eliminating his financial participation, and refusing outright to allow the director to exercise artistic control over the colorization of his films, leading Capra to join in the campaign against the process.[10][15]

text: In 1986, Film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert did a special episode of Siskel & Ebert addressing colorization as "Hollywood's New Vandalism." Siskel explained how networks were unable to show classic black-and-white films in prime-time unless they offer it in color. "They arrest people who spray subway cars, they lock up people who attack paintings and sculptures in museums, and adding color to black and white films, even if it's only to the tape shown on TV or sold in stores, is vandalism nonetheless." Roger Ebert added, "What was so wrong about black and white movies in the first place? By filming in black and white, movies can sometimes be more dreamlike and elegant and stylized and mysterious. They can add a whole additional dimension to reality, while color sometimes just supplies additional unnecessary information."[16]

text: Media mogul Ted Turner was once an aggressive proponent of this process, by employing the San Diego firm American Film Technologies.[17] When he told members of the press in July 1988 that he was considering colorizing Citizen Kane,[18] Turner's comments led to an immediate public outcry.[19] In January 1989 the Associated Press reported that two companies were producing color tests of Citizen Kane for Turner Entertainment. Criticism increased with the AP's report that filmmaker Henry Jaglom remembered that shortly before his death Orson Welles had implored him to protect Kane from being colorized.[20]

text: On February 14, 1989, Turner Entertainment president Roger Mayer announced that work to colorize Citizen Kane had been stopped:

text: Our attorneys looked at the contract between RKO Pictures Inc. and Orson Welles and his production company, Mercury Productions Inc., and, on the basis of their review, we have decided not to proceed with colorization of the movie. … While a court test might uphold our legal right to colorize the film, provisions of the contract could be read to prohibit colorization without permission of the Welles estate.[21]

text: One minute of the colorized test footage of Citizen Kane was included in a special Arena documentary, The Complete Citizen Kane, produced by the BBC in 1991.[22][23]

text: John Huston's opposition to the colorization of his work led to a landmark three-year French legal case after his death, sparked by a colorized version of The Asphalt Jungle. His daughter Anjelica Huston successfully used French copyright law to set a binding precedent in 1991 that prevents the distribution or broadcasting in France of any colorized version of a film against the wishes of the original creator or their heirs.[24] Major legislative reaction in the United States was the National Film Preservation Act of 1988 (Public Law 100-446), which prohibits any person from knowingly distributing or exhibiting to the public a film that has been materially altered, or a black and white film that has been colorized and is included in the Registry, unless such films are labeled disclosing specified information. This law also created the National Film Registry.

text: Because of the high cost of the process, Turner Entertainment stopped colorizing titles. With the coming of DVD technology, the notion of colorization was once again gaining press. Because the DVD format was more versatile, studios could offer viewers the option to choose between both versions without switching discs, and thus, the release of colorized titles once again seemed profitable. Some companies re-released the older colorized versions from the 1980s—an example of this is the Laurel and Hardy box set being released in the UK.[25]

text: Other studios, such as Sony Entertainment, commissioned West Wing Studios to colorize several Three Stooges films for DVD release. The studio was given access to the original Columbia Studios props and sets to lend authenticity to the colorized versions.[26]

text: Both film and television restoration and colorization is produced by the company Legend Films. Their patented automated process was used to colorize around 100 films between 2003 and 2009. Shirley Temple, Jane Russell, Terry Moore and Ray Harryhausen have worked with the company to colorize either their own films or their personal favorites. Two movies that Legend Films are noted for is the colorization of the exploitation film Reefer Madness, for which certain color schemes were used to create a psychedelic effect in its viewers, and Plan 9 from Outer Space. Recently (2007), Legend Films colorized It's a Wonderful Life for Paramount Pictures (whose subsidiary, Republic Pictures, had regained control of the copyright in the 1990s) and Holiday Inn in 2008 for Universal Pictures.

text: In 2004, a classic Indian film, Mughal-e-Azam, was colored for theatrical release all over the world by a company called Indian Academy of Arts and Animation (IAAA) in association with Sankranti Creations. Founder of IAAA and Owner of [Sankranti creations], Rajeev Dwivedi used this technology for the first time in India.

text: In 2005, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the first season of Bewitched on DVD. Because the first season was produced in black-and-white, Sony released two versions of the set: one with the episodes as originally broadcast and a second with the episodes colorized. A year later, the second season of Bewitched and the first season of I Dream of Jeannie, another show owned by Sony, were released the same way. These releases were colorized by Dynacs Digital Studios, a Florida-based company with film colorization and animation studios in Patna, India.

text: Colorization has also been used to restore scenes from color films that were cut from the finished product but were preserved in black-and-white. In 2018, the originally intended closing scene to the 1978 film Grease (in which the lead characters kiss) was added to the film's 40th anniversary release. A challenge that still plagues colorization efforts is the fact that the colorized black-and-white film may not match film shot originally in color; Randal Kleiser, the director of Grease, wanted to edit the scene back into the film but found the colors between the scenes did not match well enough to do so. Kleiser is optimistic that colorization technology will be advanced enough to match true color by 2028, when Grease reaches its 50th anniversary.[27]

text: Documentary make-overs[edit]

text: Colorization is sometimes used on documentary programmes. The Beatles Anthology TV show colorizes some footage of the band, most notably the performance of "All You Need Is Love" from the TV special Our World (1967). In the documentary this scene begins in its original black-and-white before dissolving into seemingly realistic, psychedelic color.[28] The color design was based on color photographs taken at the same time as the special was shot.

text: The documentary series World War 1 in Colour (2003) was broadcast on television and released on DVD in 2005. There had previously been full-color documentaries about World War II using genuine color footage, but since true color film was not practical for moving pictures at the time of World War I, the series consists of colorized contemporary footage (and photographs). Several documentaries on the Military Channel feature colorized war footage from the Second World War and the Korean War.

text: The 1960 Masters Tournament, originally broadcast in black-and-white and recorded on kinescope, was colorized by Legend Films for the documentary Jim Nantz Remembers. This was the first time a major sports event had been re-broadcast using colorization.

text: The Greatest Game Ever Played, the 1958 NFL Championship between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants was colorized by Legend Films for ESPN for a sports broadcast special in December 2008.


document_title: The O.C. (season 4)

question_text: who does ryan date in season 4 of the oc

root

text: The O.C. (season 4)

text: Crew[edit]

text: The season was produced by Warner Bros. Television, College Hill Pictures and Wonderland Sound and Vision.[13] The executive producers were Bob DeLaurentis, creator Josh Schwartz and Wonderland co-founders McG and Stephanie Savage.[13] Ian Toynton and John Stephens served as co-executive producers.[14] The staff writers were Schwartz, Savage, Stephens, J.J. Philbin, Leila Gerstein and Mark Fish. The regular directors throughout the season were Toynton, Michael Lange, Norman Buckley and Patrick Norris.[15]

tag: p

text: Cast[edit]

text: The fourth season had star billing for eight major roles. Rachel Bilson as Summer, Adam Brody as Seth, Melinda Clarke as Julie, Peter Gallagher as Sandy, Benjamin McKenzie as Ryan, and Kelly Rowan as Kirsten all returned to the main cast.[13] Former main cast member Mischa Barton did not return because her character, Marissa, died in the third season finale.[16] Autumn Reeser as recent high school graduate Taylor Townsend, and Willa Holland as Marissa's younger sister Kaitlin both joined the main cast, having previously held recurring roles. Other cast members returning in recurring roles include Cam Gigandet as Volchok,[17] Erin Foster as Heather, Michael Nouri as Summer's father Dr. Neil Roberts,[18] Paula Trickey as Taylor's mother Veronica, and Ashley Hartman who starred as Holly Fischer in the first season. Additionally former main cast member Tate Donovan returned as Jimmy Cooper in a non-canonical appearance.[19]

text: Actors who left the cast include Ryan Donowho (Johnny), Jeri Ryan (Charlotte), Shaun Duke (Henry Griffin), Kayla Ewell (Casey), and Nikki Reed (Sadie). New members who joined the cast include Kevin Sorbo as Ryan's father Frank;[20] Gary Grubbs as an oil merchant who calls himself The Bullit;[21] Brandon Quinn as Bullit's son Spencer; Chris Pratt as an environmental activist nicknamed Che;[22] and Wayne Dalglish and Corey Price as Luke Ward's younger twin brothers Brad and Eric.[23] New guest stars who joined in recurring roles include Tia Carrere as Dean Torres,[24] singer Chris Brown as lonely band geek Will Tutt,[22] Henri Lubatti as Taylor's ex-husband Henri-Michel de Momourant,[18] and Steve-O in a cameo role as an unnamed marine.[24]

text: Reception[edit]

text: While ratings were lower than those of the third season, the final season is generally regarded by fans and critics as an improvement on the third. Variety's Josef Adalian said that "[the show] is once again in great creative shape". He added that "the scripts are snappy, the plots make sense, the acting's solid, [and] the music is appropriately indie" but criticized Fox for "throwing away" the show by giving it the Thursday 9:00 p.m. timeslot.[25] The difficult timeslot Adalian was referring to was against two other very popular shows, CSI and Grey's Anatomy.[26] With a later start to the season in November the premiere attracted 3.4 million viewers,[2] which was a series low and marked a 55 percent decrease in the 18–49 demographic, from the third season premiere.[27] The first half of the season averaged 4.06 million viewers,[28] with the season as a whole averaging 4.6 million viewers.[29] This increase was mostly due to 6.7 million viewers, 76 percent more than the season average, tuning in to see the final ever installment of The O.C.[30]

text: Due to a combination of low ratings and the death of Marissa in season three, it was rumored that the show would not return for a fifth season.[31] In June 2006, Fox confirmed that "the current order for The O.C. is 16 episodes", but added that there was a chance to add more installments.[32] In September 2006, Rachel Bilson said that she felt "like the show is over",[5] and co-star Kelly Rowan stated that many of the cast realized the show was close to being cancelled. Rowan said that "when [the fourth season] was picked up for just 16 episodes this year the cast had a feeling the end was near".[33] On January 3, 2007, Fox announced that The O.C. was to be cancelled. In a statement, Schwartz said "This feels like the best time to bring the show to its close" adding that "what better time to go out than creatively on top".[34] A campaign was launched to save the show and over half a million people signed an official petition at www.fox.com/oc/savetheoc.[35] There were rumors that the show would be saved, and a move to the CW Television Network was mooted; however, CW president Dawn Ostroff, whose company is partly owned by Warner Bros, confirmed in January 2007 that while the move was discussed it was decided against.[36]

text: Schwartz said that the cancellation of the show "was really creatively liberating, not worrying about ratings."[37] Belinda Acosta of The Austin Chronicle agreed praising the show's "new energy" and its ability to successfully cover "the transition between high school and college that other series have stumbled over".[38] Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker commented that the fourth season was "a succession of terrific subplots" and praised new main cast member Taylor "as a fine, funny love interest for Ryan".[39] Greg Elwell of DVD Talk described Bullit as "the breakout character of the season" but commented that the seasons "dark opening (...) didn't do much to keep viewers around".[40] IGN's Eric Goldman was also critical saying that "as amusing as Che was, his inclusion into some later episodes gets a bit tired". Goldman also commented that "the second half of Season 4 wasn't quite as solid as the first [half]"; however, he added that while the fourth season had to prove itself again as an enjoyable watch "Josh Schwartz rose to this challenge (...) once again creating a show that was witty and self-aware".[41]

text: Episodes[edit]

text:
No. in
series
No. in
season
Title
Directed by
Written by
Original air date
Production
code
U.S. viewers
(millions)

77
1
"The Avengers"
Ian Toynton
Josh Schwartz
November 2, 2006 (2006-11-02)
3T5251
3.39[42]

Ryan has moved out of the Cohen house and is trying to deal with Marissa's death. Summer is attending Brown University in Rhode Island without Seth. Julie does whatever she can to avoid thinking of Marissa. Meanwhile, Taylor has convinced everyone she's in France.

78
2
"The Gringos"
Patrick Norris
John Stephens
November 7, 2006 (2006-11-07)†
3T5252
3.54[43]

Ryan and Seth go on a road trip to Mexico, in hopes of finding Volchok, and are soon followed by Sandy and Kirsten. Taylor tells Summer why she's not in France. Kaitlin's behavior results in Julie volunteering at Harbor's clothing drive.

79
3
"The Cold Turkey"
Michael Lange
J. J. Philbin
November 9, 2006 (2006-11-09)
3T5253
3.73[43]

Volchok turns to Sandy for advice without Ryan's knowledge. Summer prepares to face life in Newport as she returns from Brown. Meanwhile, Julie finds herself alone on Thanksgiving when she is not welcome in the Cohens' house.

80
4
"The Metamorphosis"
Norman Buckley
Leila Gerstein
November 16, 2006 (2006-11-16)
3T5254
3.77[44]

Summer realizes her new personality is just a new way of coping with Marissa's death, and Seth continues to support her. Ryan helps Taylor legalize her divorce. Meanwhile, Julie and Kaitlin attempt to stay out of trouble.

81
5
"The Sleeping Beauty"
Ian Toynton
John Stephens
November 30, 2006 (2006-11-30)
3T5255
3.67[45]

Taylor finds a new way to get closer to Ryan but ends up turning to Kaitlin for support. Summer and Che take their activism to a new level but pay the consequences later. Meanwhile, Julie fights for the affection of Kaitlin's new tennis instructor, and Kirsten seeks additional funding for NewMatch.

82
6
"The Summer Bummer"
Michael Lange
Josh Schwartz & Stephanie Savage
December 7, 2006 (2006-12-07)
3T5256
3.82[46]

Seth leaves Newport to visit Summer at Brown but runs into Che. Sandy and Kirsten try to find an opportunity to bond with Ryan. Kaitlin attempts to gain Harbor recognition by throwing a party. Meanwhile, Julie learns NewMatch is no long just a dating service.

83
7
"The Chrismukk-huh?"
Ian Toynton
J. J. Philbin & John Stephens
December 14, 2006 (2006-12-14)
3T5257
4.30[47]

Ryan and Taylor fall off a ladder and end up in the hospital. Taylor confronts Veronica about her attitude. Meanwhile, a letter from Marissa is sent to the Cohen house.

84
8
"The Earth Girls Are Easy"
Norman Buckley
Mark Fish
December 21, 2006 (2006-12-21)
3T5258
4.15[48]

Ryan plans a surprise trip for Taylor, but Seth comes along and brings Summer, whose future is at stake. Meanwhile, Bullit gets an old friend to take care of Julie's accounting, much to her displeasure and Sandy's suspicion.

85
9
"The My Two Dads"
Michael Schultz
Josh Schwartz & Stephanie Savage
January 4, 2007 (2007-01-04)
3T5259
3.93[49]

Kaitlin fails a class presentation and is forced to work with a smart classmate, whom she ends up liking. Seth and Summer move forward with their plans, regardless of how they really feel. Sandy confronts Frank about why he's in Newport.

86
10
"The French Connection"
John Stephens
J. J. Philbin
January 11, 2007 (2007-01-11)
3T5260
3.83[50]

Henri-Michel tells Ryan about Taylor's life in France, forcing him to question their relationship. Seth seeks Dr. Roberts' permission to marry Summer. Kaitlin realizes she likes Will. Summer reconnects with Holly and worries about her future. Meanwhile, Kirsten makes a shocking discovery at NewMatch.

87
11
"The Dream Lover"
Patrick Norris
Leila Gerstein
January 18, 2007 (2007-01-18)
3T5261
3.96[51]

Che brings Seth on a trip to the forest. Taylor decides she should no longer see Ryan. Julie begs for Kirsten's reconciliation. Kaitlin shuts Will out of her life.

88
12
"The Groundhog Day"
Ian Toynton
Mark Fish
January 25, 2007 (2007-01-25)
3T5262
3.57[52]

Ryan tries to act like he doesn't miss Taylor, who is seeing a therapist. Kirsten's turning 40 but has her mind focused on other things. Julie is having an affair that Kaitlin does all she can to stop. Che makes a discovery about Seth.

89
13
"The Case of the Franks"
Norman Buckley
J. J. Philbin
February 1, 2007 (2007-02-01)
3T5263
3.82[53]

Ryan and Taylor devise a plan to bring Julie and Frank closer, but Kaitlin tries to keep Bullit in Julie's personal life. Summer begins to have doubts in her relationship with Seth. Kirsten opens up about her past with Jimmy to Sandy as they prepare for their new baby.

90
14
"The Shake Up"
Ian Toynton
John Stephens
February 8, 2007 (2007-02-08)
3T5264
3.58[54]

Kaitlin does all she can to sabotage Julie and Frank's relationship. Ryan and Taylor tell each other how they feel. Summer encourages Seth to find something he's passionate about. Kirsten realizes what Newport's society is all about. As the night comes to a close, an earthquake hits Newport Beach.

91
15
"The Night Moves"
Patrick Norris
Stephanie Savage
February 15, 2007 (2007-02-15)
3T5265
3.65[55]

After the earthquake, Ryan tells Seth he needs to get to the hospital, but doesn't want to worry Taylor. An aftershock leaves Kirsten wondering if her unborn baby is still alive. Taylor takes control when she and Summer hear an intruder in their home. Kaitlin and Julie are trapped in an ice cream store.

92
16
"The End's Not Near, It's Here"
Ian Toynton
Josh Schwartz
February 22, 2007 (2007-02-22)
3T5266
6.59[56]

Ever since the earthquake destroyed their home, the Cohens have taken temporary residence at the Roberts' home. Sandy and Kirsten search for a new home. Summer must choose between touring with GEORGE and her future with Seth. Taylor and Ryan determine their future together. Julie must decide whether to marry Frank or Bullit. Before Ryan leaves Newport, as he turns out of the driveway, he remembers the first time he met Marissa.
Years later, Ryan is attending Berkeley. Julie graduates from college with Kaitlin, Frank, Bullit and her son applauding her achievement. Sandy is now teaching law classes. Seth and Summer get married, with Ryan and Taylor as their best man and maid of honor and Sophie Rose Cohen as their flower girl. Ryan, as an architect, reaches out to a young boy, much in the way Sandy reached out to him years ago.

tag: table

text: Notes[edit]

text: DVD release[edit]

text: The DVD release of season four was released by Warner Bros. in the US on 22 May 2007 after it had completed broadcast on television. As well as every episode from the season, the DVD release features bonus material including unaired scenes, featurettes, and audio commentary on the series finale.

text:
The O.C. - The Complete Fourth Season

Set details[58]
Special features[58]

16 episodes
5-disc set
Running Time: (Region 1) 672 minutes; (Region 2) 645 minutes; (Region 4) 667 minutes
1.78:1 aspect ratio
English (Dolby Surround 2.0)
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish

Audio Commentary:

"The End's Not Near, It's Here"

Unaired scenes
Featurettes:

The Magic That Is Chrismukkah
Summer Roberts - Beauty Meets Brown

Release dates[58][59][60]

 United States
 Canada
 United Kingdom
 Australia

May 22, 2007
May 28, 2007
July 4, 2007


document_title: Customer relationship management

question_text: what are the main components of a crm system

text: Customer relationship management

text: Software history[edit]

text: The concept of customer relationship management started in the early 1970s, when customer satisfaction was evaluated using annual surveys or by front-line asking.[citation needed] At that time, businesses had to rely on standalone mainframe systems to automate sales, but the extent of technology allowed them to categorize customers in spreadsheets and lists. In 1982, Kate and Robert Kestnbaum introduced the concept of Database marketing, namely applying statistical methods to analyze and gather customer data.[3] By 1986, Pat Sullivan and Mike Muhney released a customer evaluation system called ACT! based on the principle of digital rolodex, which offered a contact management service for the first time.

text: The trend was followed by numerous developers trying to maximize leads' potential, including Tom Siebel, who signed the first CRM product Siebel Systems in 1993.[4] Nevertheless, customer relationship management popularized in 1997, due to the work of Siebel, Gartner, and IBM. Between 1997 and 2000, leading CRM products were enriched with enterprise resource planning functions, and shipping and marketing capabilities.[5] Siebel introduced the first mobile CRM app called Siebel Sales Handheld in 1999. The idea of a cloud-hosted and moveable customer bases was soon adopted by other leading providers at the time, including PeopleSoft, Oracle, and SAP.[6]

text: The first open-source CRM system was developed by SugarCRM in 2004. During this period, CRM was rapidly migrating to cloud, as a result of which it became accessible to sole entrepreneurs and small teams, and underwent a huge wave of price reduction.[5] Around 2009, developers began considering the options to profit from social media's momentum, and designed tools to help companies become accessible on all users' favorite networks. Many startups at the time benefited from this trend to provide exclusively social CRM solutions, including Base and Nutshell.[5] The same year, Gartner organized and held the first Customer Relationship Management Summit, and summarized the features systems should offer to be classified as CRM solutions.[7] In 2013 and 2014, most of the popular CRM products were linked to business intelligence systems and communication software to improve corporate communication and end-users' experience. The leading trend is to replace standardized CRM solutions with industry-specific ones, or to make them customizable enough to meet the needs of every business.[8]

text: In November 2016, Forrester released a report where it "identified the nine most significant CRM suites from eight prominent vendors," among them companies such as Infor, Microsoft, and NetSuite.[9]

text: Types[edit]

text: Strategic[edit]

text: Strategic CRM is focused upon the development of a customer-centric business culture.[citation needed]

text: Operational[edit]

text: The primary goal of customer relationship management systems is to integrate and automate sales, marketing, and customer support. Therefore, these systems typically have a dashboard that gives an overall view of the three functions on a single customer view, a single page for each customer that a company may have. The dashboard may provide client information, past sales, previous marketing efforts, and more, summarizing all of the relationships between the customer and the firm. Operational CRM is made up of 3 main components: sales force automation, marketing automation, and service automation.[10]

text:
Sales force automation works with all stages in the sales cycle, from initially entering contact information to converting a prospective client into an actual client.[11] It implements sales promotion analysis, automates the tracking of a client's account history for repeated sales or future sales and coordinates sales, marketing, call centers, and retail outlets. It prevents duplicate efforts between a salesperson and a customer and also automatically tracks all contacts and follow-ups between both parties.[citation needed]
Marketing automation focuses on easing the overall marketing process to make it more effective and efficient. CRM tools with marketing automation capabilities can automate repeated tasks, for example, sending out automated marketing emails at certain times to customers, or posting marketing information on social media. The goal with marketing automation is to turn a sales lead into a full customer. CRM systems today also work on customer engagement through social media.[12]
Service automation is the part of the CRM system that focuses on direct customer service technology. Through service automation, customers are supported through multiple channels such as phone, email, knowledge bases, ticketing portals, FAQs, and more.[10]

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text: Analytical[edit]

text: The role of analytical CRM systems is to analyze customer data collected through multiple sources, and present it so that business managers can make more informed decisions.[citation needed] Analytical CRM systems use techniques such as data mining, correlation, and pattern recognition to analyze the customer data. These analytics help improve customer service by finding small problems which can be solved, perhaps, by marketing to different parts of a consumer audience differently.[10] For example, through the analysis of a customer base's buying behavior, a company might see that this customer base has not been buying a lot of products recently. After scanning through this data, the company might think to market to this subset of consumers differently, in order to best communicate how this company's products might benefit this group specifically.[13]

text: Collaborative[edit]

text: The third primary aim of CRM systems is to incorporate external stakeholders such as suppliers, vendors, and distributors, and share customer information across organizations. For example, feedback can be collected from technical support calls, which could help provide direction for marketing products and services to that particular customer in the future.[14]

text: Customer data platform[edit]

text: A customer data platform (CDP) is a computer system used by marketing departments that assembles data about individual people from various sources into one database, with which other software systems can interact.[15]  As of February 2017 there were about twenty companies selling such systems and revenue for them was around US$300 million.[15]

text: Components[edit]

text: The main components of CRM are building and managing customer relationships through marketing, observing relationships as they mature through distinct phases, managing these relationships at each stage and recognizing that the distribution of value of a relationship to the firm is not homogenous. When building and managing customer relationships through marketing, firms might benefit from using a variety of tools to help organizational design, incentive schemes, customer structures, and more to optimize the reach of its marketing campaigns. Through the acknowledgement of the distinct phases of CRM, businesses will be able to benefit from seeing the interaction of multiple relationships as connected transactions. The final factor of CRM highlights the importance of CRM through accounting for the profitability of customer relationships. Through studying the particular spending habits of customers, a firm may be able to dedicate different resources and amounts of attention to different types of consumers.[16]

text: Relational Intelligence, or awareness of the variety of relationships a customer can have with a firm, is an important component to the main phases of CRM. Companies may be good at capturing demographic data, such as gender, age, income, and education, and connecting them with purchasing information to categorize customers into profitability tiers, but this is only a firm's mechanical view of customer relationships.[17] This therefore is a sign that firms believe that customers are still resources that can be used for up-sell or cross-sell opportunities, rather than humans looking for interesting and personalized interactions.[18]

text: CRM systems include:

text:
Data warehouse technology, used to aggregate transaction information, to merge the information with CRM products, and to provide key performance indicators.
Opportunity management which helps the company to manage unpredictable growth and demand, and implement a good forecasting model to integrate sales history with sales projections.[19]
CRM systems that track and measure marketing campaigns over multiple networks, tracking customer analysis by customer clicks and sales.
Some CRM software is available as a software as a service (SaaS), delivered via the internet and accessed via a web browser instead of being installed on a local computer. Businesses using the software do not purchase it, but typically pay a recurring subscription fee to the software vendor.[10]
For small businesses a CRM system may consist of a contact manager system that integrates emails, documents, jobs, faxes, and scheduling for individual accounts.[20] CRM systems available for specific markets (legal, finance) frequently focus on event management and relationship tracking as opposed to financial return on investment (ROI).
CRM systems for eCommerce, focused on marketing automation tasks, like: cart rescue, re-engage users with email, personalization.
Customer-centric relationship management (CCRM) is a nascent sub-discipline that focuses on customer preferences instead of customer leverage. CCRM aims to add value by engaging customers in individual, interactive relationships.[16]
Systems for non-profit and membership-based organizations help track constituents, fundraising, sponsors' demographics, membership levels, membership directories, volunteering and communication with individuals.[20]

text: Effect on customer satisfaction[edit]

text: Customer satisfaction has important implications for the economic performance of firms because it has the ability to increase customer loyalty and usage behavior and reduce customer complaints and the likelihood of customer defection.[21][22] The implementation of a CRM approach is likely to have an effect on customer satisfaction and customer knowledge for a variety of different reasons.

text: Firstly, firms are able to customize their offerings for each customer.[23] By accumulating information across customer interactions and processing this information to discover hidden patterns, CRM applications help firms customize their offerings to suit the individual tastes of their customers.[23] This customization enhances the perceived quality of products and services from a customer's viewpoint, and because perceived quality is a determinant of customer satisfaction, it follows that CRM applications indirectly affect customer satisfaction. CRM applications also enable firms to provide timely, accurate processing of customer orders and requests and the ongoing management of customer accounts.[23] For example, Piccoli and Applegate discuss how Wyndham uses IT tools to deliver a consistent service experience across its various properties to a customer. Both an improved ability to customize and a reduced variability of the consumption experience enhance perceived quality, which in turn positively affects customer satisfaction.[24] Furthermore, CRM applications also help firms manage customer relationships more effectively across the stages of relationship initiation, maintenance, and termination.[25]

text: Customer benefits[edit]

text: With CRM systems customers are served better on day to day process and with more reliable information their demand of self service from companies will decrease. If there is less need to interact with the company for different problems, customer satisfaction level increases.[26] These central benefits of CRM will be connected hypothetically to the three kinds of equity that are relationship, value and brand, and in the end to customer equity. Eight benefits were recognized to provide value drivers.[27]

text:
Enhanced ability to target profitable customers.
Integrated assistance across channels
Enhanced sales force efficiency and effectiveness
Improved pricing
Customized products and services
Improved customer service efficiency and effectiveness
Individualized marketing messages also called campaigns
Connect customers and all channels on a single platform.

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text: In 2012, after reviewing the previous studies, someone selected some of those benefits which are more significant in customer's satisfaction and summarized them into the following cases:[28]

text:
Improve customer services: In general, customers would have some questions, concerns or requests. CRM services provide the ability to a company for producing, allocating and managing requests or something made by customers. For example, call center software, which helps to connect a customer to the manager or person who can best assist them with their existing problem, is one of the CRM abilities that can be implemented to increase efficiency.[29]
Increased personalized service or one-to-one service: Personalizing customer service or one-to-one service provides companies to improve understanding and gaining knowledge of the customers and also to have better knowledge about their customers' preferences, requirements and demands.
Responsive to customer's needs: Customers' situations and needs can be understood by the firms focusing on customer needs and requirements.[30]
Customer segmentation: In CRM, segmentation is used to categorize customers, according to some similarity, such as industry, job or some other characteristics, into similar groups.[31] Although these characteristics, can be one or more attributes. It can be defined as a subdividing the customers based on already known good discriminator.
Improve customization of marketing: Meaning of customization of marketing is that, the firm or organization adapt and change its services or products based on presenting a different and unique product or services for each customer. With the purpose of ensuring that customer needs and requirements are met Customization is used by the organization. Companies can put investment in information from customers and then customize their products or services to maintain customer interests.
Multichannel integration: Multichannel integration shows the point of co creation of customer value in CRM. On the other hand, a company's skill to perform multichannel integration successfully, is heavily dependent on the organization's ability getting together customer information from all channels and incorporate it with other related information.[32]
Time saving: CRM will let companies to interact with customers more frequently, by personalized message and communication way which can be produced rapidly and matched on a timely basis, and finally they can better understand their customers and therefore look forward to their needs.[33]
Improve customer knowledge: Firms can make and improve products and services through the information from tracking (e.g. via website tracking) customer behaviour to customer tastes and needs.[34] CRM could contribute to a competitive advantage in improving firm's ability of customer information collecting to customize products and services according to customer needs.

text: Examples[edit]

text: Research has found a 5% increase in customer retention boosts lifetime customer profits by 50% on average across multiple industries, as well as a boost of up to 90% within specific industries such as insurance.[35] Companies that have mastered customer relationship strategies have the most successful CRM programs. For example, MBNA Europe has had a 75% annual profit growth since 1995. The firm heavily invests in screening potential cardholders. Once proper clients are identified, the firm retains 97% of its profitable customers. They implement CRM by marketing the right products to the right customers. The firm's customers' card usage is 52% above industry norm, and the average expenditure is 30% more per transaction. Also 10% of their account holders ask for more information on cross-sale products.[35]

text: Amazon has also seen great success through its customer proposition. The firm implemented personal greetings, collaborative filtering, and more for the customer. They also used CRM training for the employees to see up to 80% of customers repeat.[35]

text: Improving CRM within a firm[edit]

text: Consultants, such as Bain & Company, argue that it is important for companies establishing strong CRM systems to improve their relational intelligence.[36] According to this argument, a company must recognize that people have many different types of relationships with different brands. One research study analyzed relationships between consumers in China, Germany, Spain, and the United States, with over 200 brands in 11 industries including airlines, cars and media. This information is valuable as it provides demographic, behavioral, and value-based customer segmentation. These types of relationships can be both positive and negative. Some customers view themselves as friends of the brands, while others as enemies, and some are mixed with a love-hate relationship with the brand. Some relationships are distant, intimate or anything in between.[18]

text: Analyzing the information[edit]

text: Managers must understand the different reasons for the types of relationships, and provide the customer with what they are looking for. Companies can collect this information by using surveys, interviews, and more, with current customers. For example, Frito-Lay conducted many ethnographic interviews with customers to try and understand the relationships they wanted with the companies and the brands. They found that most customers were adults who used the product to feel more playful. They may have enjoyed the company's bright orange color, messiness and shape.[37]

text: Companies must also improve their relational intelligence of their CRM systems. These days, companies store and receive huge amounts of data through emails, online chat sessions, phone calls, and more.[38] Many companies do not properly make use of this great amount of data, however. All of these are signs of what types of relationships the customer wants with the firm, and therefore companies may consider investing more time and effort in building out their relational intelligence.[17] Companies can use data mining technologies and web searches to understand relational signals. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. is also a very important factor in picking up and analyzing information. Understanding the customer and capturing this data allows companies to convert customer's signals into information and knowledge that the firm can use to understand a potential customer's desired relations with a brand.[37]

text: It is also very important to analyze all of this information to determine which relationships prove the most valuable. This helps convert data into profits for the firm. Stronger bonds contribute to building market share. By managing different portfolios for different segments of the customer base, the firm can achieve strategic goals.[citation needed]

text: Employee training[edit]

text: Many firms have also implemented training programs to teach employees how to recognize and effectively create strong customer-brand relationships. For example, Harley Davidson sent its employees on the road with customers, who were motorcycle enthusiasts, to help solidify relationships. Other employees have also been trained in social psychology and the social sciences to help bolster strong customer relationships. Customer service representatives must be educated to value customer relationships, and trained to understand existing customer profiles. Even the finance and legal departments should understand how to manage and build relationships with customers.[39]

text: Application[edit]

text: Applying new technologies while using CRM systems requires changes in infrastructure of the organization as well as deployment of new technologies such as business rules, databases and information technology.[37]

text: In practice[edit]

text: Call centers[edit]

text: Contact center CRM providers are popular for small and mid-market businesses. These systems codify the interactions between company and customers by using analytics and key performance indicators to give the users information on where to focus their marketing and customer service. This allows agents to have access to a caller's history to provide personalized customer communication. The intention is to maximize average revenue per user, decrease churn rate and decrease idle and unproductive contact with the customers.[40][41][42]

text:
Growing in popularity is the idea of gamifying, or using game design elements and game principles in a non-game environment such as customer service environments. The gamification of customer service environments includes providing elements found in games like rewards and bonus points to customer service representatives as a method of feedback for a job well done.[43]
Gamification tools can motivate agents by tapping into their desire for rewards, recognition, achievements, and competition.[44]

text: Contact center automation[edit]

text: Contact center automation, the practice of having an integrated system that coordinates contacts between an organization and the public, is designed to reduce the repetitive and tedious parts of a contact center agent's job. Automation prevents this by having pre-recorded audio messages that help customers solve their problems. For example, an automated contact center may be able to re-route a customer through a series of commands asking him or her to select a certain number in order to speak with a particular contact center agent who specializes in the field in which the customer has a question.[45] Software tools can also integrate with the agent's desktop tools to handle customer questions and requests. This also saves time on behalf of the employees.[12]

text: Social media[edit]

text: Social CRM involves the use of social media and technology to engage and learn from consumers.[46] Because the public, especially young people, are increasingly using social networking sites, companies use[18] these sites to draw attention to their products, services and brands, with the aim of building up customer relationships to increase demand.

text: Some CRM systems integrate social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to track and communicate with customers. These customers also share their own opinions and experiences with a company's products and services, giving these firms more insight. Therefore, these firms can both share their own opinions and also track the opinions of their customers.[14]

text: Enterprise feedback management software platforms, such as Confirmit, Medallia, and Satmetrix, combine internal survey data with trends identified through social media to allow businesses to make more accurate decisions on which products to supply.[47]

text: Location-based services[edit]

text: CRM systems can also include technologies that create geographic marketing campaigns. The systems take in information based on a customer's physical location and sometimes integrates it with popular location-based GPS applications. It can be used for networking or contact management as well to help increase sales based on location.[12]

text: Business-to-business transactions[edit]

text: Despite the general notion that CRM systems were created for the customer-centric businesses, they can also be applied to B2B environments to streamline and improve customer management conditions. For the best level of CRM operation in a B2B environment, the software must be personalized and delivered at individual levels.[48]

text: The main differences between business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business CRM systems concern aspects like sizing of contact databases and length of relationships.[49] Business-to-business companies tend to have smaller contact databases than business-to-consumer, the volume of sales in business-to-business is relatively small. There are fewer figure propositions in business-to-business, but in some cases, they cost a lot more than business-to-consumer items and relationships in business-to-business environment are built over a longer period of time. Furthermore, business-to-business CRM must be easily integrated with products from other companies. Such integration enables the creation of forecasts about customer behavior based on their buying history, bills, business success, etc. An application for a business-to-business company must have a function to connect all the contacts, processes and deals among the customers segment and then prepare a paper. Automation of sales process is an important requirement for business-to-business products. It should effectively manage the deal and progress it through all the phases towards signing. Finally, a crucial point is personalization. It helps the business-to-business company to create and maintain strong and long-lasting relationship with the customer.

text: CRM market[edit]

text: The overall CRM market grew by 12.3 percent in 2015.[50] The following table lists the top vendors in 2012-2015 (figures in millions of US dollars) published in Gartner studies.[50][51][52][53]

text:
Vendor
2015 Revenue ($M)
2015 Share(%)
2014 Revenue ($M)
2014 Share(%)
2013 Revenue ($M)
2013 Share (%)
2012 Revenue ($M)
2012 Share (%)

Salesforce.com CRM
5,171
19.7
4,250
18.4
3,292
16.1
2,525
14.0

SAP AG
2,684
10.2
2,795
12.1
2,622
12.8
2,327
12.9

Oracle
2,047
7.8
2,102
9.1
2,097
10.2
2,015
11.1

Microsoft Dynamics CRM
1,142
4.3
1,432
6.2
1,392
6.8
1,135
6.3

Others
15,245
58.0
12,520
54.2
11,076
54.1
10,086
55.7

Total
26,287
100
23,100
100
20,476
100
18,090
100

text: The four largest vendors with CRM system offerings are Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft, which represented 42 percent of the market in 2015.[50] Other providers also are popular for small and mid market businesses. Splitting CRM providers into nine different categories (Enterprise CRM Suite, Midmarket CRM Suite, Small-Business CRM Suite, sales force automation, incentive management, marketing solutions, business intelligence, data quality, consultancies), each category has a different market leader. Additionally, applications often focus on professional fields such as healthcare, manufacturing, and other areas with branch-specific requirements.[citation needed]

text: Market trends[edit]

text: In the Gartner CRM Summit 2010 challenges like "system tries to capture data from social networking traffic like Twitter, handles Facebook page addresses or other online social networking sites" were discussed and solutions were provided that would help in bringing more clientele.[54] Many CRM vendors offer subscription-based web tools (cloud computing) and SaaS. Some CRM systems are equipped with mobile capabilities, making information accessible to remote sales staff.[55]Salesforce.com was the first company to provide enterprise applications through a web browser, and has maintained its leadership position.[56]

text: Traditional providers have recently moved into the cloud-based market via acquisitions of smaller providers: Oracle purchased RightNow in October 2011[57] and SAP acquired SuccessFactors in December 2011.[58]

text: The era of the "social customer"[59] refers to the use of social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Pinterest, Instagram, Yelp, customer reviews in Amazon, etc.) by customers. CRM philosophy and strategy has shifted to encompass social networks and user communities.

text: Sales forces also play an important role in CRM, as maximizing sales effectiveness and increasing sales productivity is a driving force behind the adoption of CRM. Empowering sales managers was listed as one of the top 5 CRM trends in 2013.[60]

text: Another related development is vendor relationship management (VRM), which provide tools and services that allow customers to manage their individual relationship with vendors. VRM development has grown out of efforts by ProjectVRM at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Identity Commons' Internet Identity Workshops, as well as by a growing number of startups and established companies. VRM was the subject of a cover story in the May 2010 issue of CRM Magazine.[61]

text: Pharmaceutical companies were some of the first investors in sales force automation (SFA) and some are on their third- or fourth-generation implementations. However, until recently, the deployments did not extend beyond SFA—limiting their scope and interest to Gartner analysts.[62]

text: Another trend worth noting is the rise of Customer Success as a discipline within companies. More and more companies establish Customer Success teams as separate from the traditional Sales team and task them with managing existing customer relations. This trend fuels demand for additional capabilities for more holistic understanding of the customer health, which is a limitation for many existing vendors in the space.[63] As a result, a growing number of new entrants enter the market, while existing vendors add capabilities in this area to their suites. In 2017, artificial intelligence and predictive analytics were identified as the newest trends in CRM.[64]

text: Criticism[edit]

text: Companies face large challenges when trying to implement CRM systems. Consumer companies frequently manage their customer relationships haphazardly and unprofitably.[65] They may not effectively or adequately use their connections with their customers, due to misunderstandings or misinterpretations of a CRM system's analysis. Clients who want to be treated more like a friend may be treated like just a party for exchange, rather than a unique individual, due to, occasionally, a lack of a bridge between the CRM data and the CRM analysis output. Many studies show that customers are frequently frustrated by a company's inability to meet their relationship expectations, and on the other side, companies do not always know how to translate the data they have gained from CRM software into a feasible action plan.[18] In 2003, a Gartner report estimated that more than $2 billion had been spent on software that was not being used. According to CSO Insights, less than 40 percent of 1,275 participating companies had end-user adoption rates above 90 percent.[66] Many corporations only use CRM systems on a partial or fragmented basis.[67] In a 2007 survey from the UK, four-fifths of senior executives reported that their biggest challenge is getting their staff to use the systems they had installed. 43 percent of respondents said they use less than half the functionality of their existing systems.[68] However, market research regarding consumers' preferences may increase the adoption of CRM among the developing countries' consumers.[69]

text: Collection of customer data such as personally identifiable information must strictly obey customer privacy laws, which often requires extra expenditures on legal support.

text: Part of the paradox with CRM stems from the challenge of determining exactly what CRM is and what it can do for a company.[70] The CRM paradox, also referred to as the "Dark side of CRM",[71] may entail favoritism and differential treatment of some customers.

text: CRM technologies can easily become ineffective if there is no proper management, and they are not implemented correctly. The data sets must also be connected, distributed, and organized properly, so that the users can access the information that they need quickly and easily. Research studies also show that customers are increasingly becoming dissatisfied with contact center experiences due to lags and wait times. They also request and demand multiple channels of communications with a company, and these channels must transfer information seamlessly. Therefore, it is increasingly important for companies to deliver a cross-channel customer experience that can be both consistent as well as reliable.[12]