All right, Luke 19, a beautiful encounter. We're gonna parachute into for a few moments here between Jesus and this individual called Zacchaeus. He said, Jesus was passing through Jericho and a man was there by the name of Zacchaeus and he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was but being a short man he could not because of the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore fig tree to see him since Jesus was coming that way. When Jesus reached, when Jesus reached that spot he looked up and said, Zacchaeus come down immediately I must stay at your house today. So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter. He has gone to be the guest of a sinner but Zacchaeus stood up and said to Jesus look here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor. And if I've cheated anybody out of anything and he had I will pay back four times the amount. Jesus said to him today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a son of Abraham for the son of man came to seek and save that which was lost. There's an awful lot going on here that's very, very profound. I know we have really consigned this story often to Sunday school because a short man climbing a tall tree to see Jesus I suppose is quite amusing and playful but something much more profound is going on here. Never think that this story and simple stories like this because they seem so simple are not profound. Something very, very essential is going on here that was to do with the core of the gospel and it still is. So here's a guy called Zacchaeus in the Bible as you know there were two categories of low life people sinners and beneath them tax collectors. And this guy is not just a tax collector he is the chief tax collector. So he's super hated in the community. Tax collectors were hated by the Romans above them to whom they paid the taxes they collected from their own people the Jews. So Zacchaeus is a Jew collecting taxes from his own people to pay the Romans and pocketing his own share of that by charging more taxes than people should be paying and putting some money in his own pocket before he passed it onto the Romans. So the Romans hated him and the Jews hated him and so this was a high profile despised individual in the community who would never darken the door of a church who would never believe or dream they would be welcomed in a church. In other words he was like some of you before you came to this church or before you went to the first church you went to. Zacchaeus is like millions of people of stones throw from this building who maybe know that church exists and maybe know that we're doing church in here tonight but would never dream of risking coming in here for fear or rejection. Zacchaeus is the kind of person you wouldn't want to be seen having coffee within town. You would not mind having a coffee with him if it could be secret but you wouldn't want to be seen with him because to be seen with him would to be risking your reputation and would be to let people loose in their imagination of what you must be thinking or not thinking by hanging out with someone that's as corrupt and as wicked and as evil as this man Zacchaeus. Despite Zacchaeus's apparent reputation and despite him being hated and despised by the religious people in the church and there's still far too many of those in the church in our country which is like 98% of people in our country are not in church. Amongst the 2% they do go to church but are far too many religious people in that crowd still that despise and hate Zacchaeus's and forget that they came from the same world that he came from. So Zacchaeus is fascinating because clearly despite this reputation he has and despite the reputation some of you had and some people have that are on your minds tonight that you wish were here and you should invite at Christmas because people in this country once a year, once a year Christmas is a time in this country when unsafe people who would never dream of going to church can go to church and it doesn't seem weird to their friends. You should cash in on that. You ask them in January they'll say no, I couldn't get away with it, my family will say, you're doing what? It is an anti-cultural thing to do to go to church in this country but not at Christmas. This is why we have to go crazy with inviting people to church at Christmas. So Zacchaeus goes online figures out where Jesus is, realizes he's coming by his town in the next few days, goes and finds a sycamore fig tree. Apparently there's different kinds of fig trees. The sycamore one was the one with the largest leaves on the biggest foliage. I guess he thought I can hide better inside that tree as well as have a good vantage point to look down as Jesus and his entourage pass by. So he goes ahead of Jesus arriving, gets in the tree, climbs up there. So here's a guy that wants to be looking at Jesus. He's interested in Jesus but he doesn't want to be seen to be looking. This is true for many of us, millions in this country. They want to know what goes on inside this room but they don't feel that they can risk coming into this room. Thank God for the internet and for podcasts because I suppose Zacchaeus' tree was the equivalent of today's internet. People that want to go somewhere and hide that want to be anonymous whilst they look at what God's doing around the world. The internet is a gift to people around the world that want to do that and that's how some of you first stepped into the beginnings of your interest in the things of God and this is Zacchaeus. Jesus comes along, stops at the foot of the tree, looks up. Now this must be shocking for Zacchaeus because not only does Jesus know he's in the tree, he knows his name. We have no idea how Jesus knew either of those things. Looks up and calls him by name. He must have nearly fallen out the tree. Zacchaeus, come down from the tree because today I must come and hang out with you at your house.  Then he's got these entourage of people that kind of hung around in case there was a chance that they get a free meal today because he does feed the 5,000 now and then so that room is around and hungry people gathered around to see they could get a free meal. Then he also always has with him those fake news people. The Donald Trump hates and we all should hate those fake news people that invent stories and make things mean what they were never intended to mean. It takes too far to context. So those people are always with Jesus. So the moment he stops and shouts the name Zacchaeus and uses that name Zacchaeus to the man in the tree, the moment he said Zacchaeus that they went straight on their phones and it began to trend instantly. You won't believe who Jesus just invited himself to his house. Jesus just said in front of us all to this high profile despised person, I'm gonna come and hang out with you and they got to work on putting their spin on that. If this guy knew who he was, he wouldn't be hanging out with him because you're not gonna build a church, you're not gonna get followers if you make friends with people as hated as Zacchaeus is what religious people felt.  Every encounter Jesus had of this nature was high profile on purpose. Jesus intentionally wanted this to be done openly and in public. He could have gone past the tree knowing he was there, sent one of his team back later to say there's a guy in that tree called Zacchaeus, tell him I know about him, I'm gonna meet him tonight at 10 o'clock at such and such a point Jesus could have done that. Instead he creates a very high profile, controversial, confrontational, very unpopular scenario because God could not care less what we think about who he reaches out to. So Jesus just reaches out to him and you need to know something, every time you include someone in your circle of love, every time you're kind and gracious and forgiving and merciful to someone that the world and the church hate, you will suffer and your church will suffer. Believe me, I know this from experience because I reinvented our church, started a new church inside the old church after 20 years and I started to reach into our community and reach to the poor. When I started bringing in hundreds of Zacchaeuses, all hell broke loose in our church because of how much we despised the idea of coming and sitting next to people whose lifestyles we had done this to for years. And Jesus goes to this man's house. Now, what's upsetting the people that are muttering and that are gossiping and that are posting and that are trolling him, what's going on is that they are freaking out because going to this man's house, breaking bread with him in that culture and still many cultures around the world today, breaking bread with him was a huge act of this. Wasn't casual, it wasn't just food and hospitality, wasn't a bite to eat, it wasn't popping in. Going to this man's house and spending hours with him was a massive act of this. This was upsetting enough to the people that were criticizing him, but what made it worse, what really stuck in their religious throats, what really made them struggle to criticize him and be threatened by it was this. That before Jesus extended this to Zacchaeus, he never asked him first to do any of this. And the title of this message and this idea is that acceptance precedes change. Acceptance, acceptance always, as far as God's concerned, not the church now, we're not good at this. This is a massive weakness and blind spot to us, which is why we need to talk about it. Acceptance, as far as God's concerned, always is extended to us before he asks any of you to do any of this. Now, what we have done in the church is we've done this. We've changed these round and now we say to people, you can have some of this in exchange for more of this. We ask people to earn this by paying for it with this. This happens in marriages, in friendships, in parenting, in teams, in churches, in bosses to employees, in those that lead and those that follow, we start to trade in these things. We start to make this something that you earn as if this belongs to us, as if this is something we own and because I own it, I can make you jump through hoops to get some of this from me. And what happens is this whole thing becomes our currency of coercion and manipulation. We start to use them as a way of trading and now to get invited to get included to be spoken well of, to be invited to the party, to be included in the WhatsApp channel, to be one of our group, to be in with the crowd, to be accepted if it looks like any of those things, then you have to be willing to fix some things in your life because we can't be around you and give you this without you changing some stuff about you is what we do to each other. I've got to tell you, if God did that to you, you would not have been happy about getting up this morning because you'd have lived all day wondering, do I still have this from God? Because I don't think I've done enough of this for God lately. And you would be here today not knowing whether or not this was strong, was it weak, was it something that you could earn and get more acceptance from him? And some of you, by the way, struggle with this internally, some of you don't accept yourselves.  And so many people stay away from church when they feel that our acceptance of them is conditional upon this and so they go walk about for weeks or months on end because they don't feel they've changed enough in that area where they know they're weak and so they stay away until they feel they've beaten something and often they don't, it beats them without the company and the warmth and the strength of the church around them, it beats them so they never come back. And what they feel and never articulate to us and so we must is they feel that this is what we expected from them in exchange for being kind of included and accepted. And I want you to know tonight that this issue of acceptance and change was always at the very core of the early church's issues. And I think to me around the world still is. This was the defining issue for the church and I could have taken other examples, I could have taken to the thief on the cross. Do you want an example of acceptance and no change?  Will you keep me in your mind today? Will you include me today? What happens next for you? Can I be part of that? And Jesus did not say to him, well you would reach to me now, wouldn't you?  The least you should do from the cross is say sorry to people stood around here, many of whom you no doubt stole from that came especially to see you get what you deserved. Jesus didn't lecture him, Jesus didn't say I can't do that because you've not repented and put your hand up in a service and got saved. You're not baptizing water, you've never tithed, never volunteered, never been to a small group. Not one of our type. Jesus just said to him, you're in. You're in and I've got to tell you when that thief on the cross got to heaven that day, he didn't go to economy class. In case that makes you feel better because you earned your salvation. So religious people do, religious people get upset when God includes people that they punish and exclude and keep at a distance and say we would accept you but first you have to do this, this and this and God just goes get out of the way and just accepts them. And the thief on the cross received that from him and when he got to heaven that day, he went to the same heaven as Moses and Elijah and the apostle Paul and the apostle Peter. He's in the same space as all they are and he just is a last minute, John he come lately, didn't earn it and God couldn't care less what we think about that. That's why people freaked out when they said, this parable, when he said, the last shall be first. Like what, what hang on a minute? Well, I worked all day for that money. What do you mean? What do you mean the people that came for five minutes get the same as me? They don't like it because newsflash grace is not fair and God doesn't care. This grace thing is totally out of control. It is utterly unreasonable. It makes no sense and God doesn't care. I think God loves it when he sees how we freak out at how loose he is with his grace. So this is the essence of the gospel because in Acts 15 it finished up in a massive showdown called the Council of Jerusalem because the Jewish believers, some of them were going around into Gentile territory where the apostle Paul was working in non-Jewish which is most of the world, in non-Jewish territories in the Mediterranean and Paul's going into these countries preaching and non-Jews are getting saved and so from Jerusalem they sent out these specialists called Judaizers and their job was to go to Gentile commons and say to them, no, no, no, you can't be a proper Christian. You can't have the acceptance of Christ until you do some of this. You have to get circumcised. You have to keep certain Jewish rituals and observe certain Jewish observances and if you do that then you will be accepted by God is what they went around teaching. They had a theology for it. Paul said, I'm not having this and so Paul insisted on a council, on a debate, on a discussion, on an argument. In Jerusalem and in Acts chapter 15 in your Bible read it sometime, all the elders, the apostles, the great apostle Peter who himself was a massive part of the problem. The apostle Peter spent three years 24 seven with Jesus reaching the world and he hated Gentiles. Go figure. Peter even preached on Pentecost, this outpouring that's in fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies of the prophet Joel. This outpouring he said is for all people, it's for the world, for all flesh. I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. He preaches that at Pentecost but he doesn't believe it because only a few chapters later in the book of Acts in the city of Antioch where Paul started a Gentile church. Peter comes down from Jerusalem and hangs out with the Gentile converts and he's having dinner with them and cracking jokes with them and hanging out and then suddenly some of Peter's peer leadership team come down from Jerusalem and the apostle Peter stops hanging out with them.  And so the apostle Paul sees this and confronts him publicly. He says Peter, this is totally hypocritical. Even it's even causing people like Timothy, his young disciple. It's causing him even to be led astray because he's thinking, this is the great apostle Peter so if it's him that's doing it, it must be right. Is what Timothy's thinking. So Paul's protecting his own team from Peter's hypocrisy and confronts him. So this is the great apostle Peter, you all with me? This guy walked on water, raised the dead, opened the eyes of the blind. This is Peter 24, 7 with Jesus three years. This is the same guy that said, you're the Christ, the Son of God. And Jesus said, people didn't show you that. You got that straight from God. This is the same guy who hates Gentiles. I tell you that for this reason. Don't assume because you're in a good church that you're immune from this being a problem for you. Don't think because we have great preaching and great worship, because this was true of our church. And every single Sunday we sang songs and the lyrics of the songs were all to do with loving and reaching the ceases. Our preaching was all about reaching the world for Jesus. We shabbat-abbadood over the tragedy of the lost world. We prophesied, we called them from the North, South, Eastern, West. We did all of that stuff. We cried over the lost. We shed tears. The intercessors interceded for the lost. But when I started busing in the lost, all hell broke loose. Because we say, don't we? It's a trendy thing around the world now. We say, don't we? Come as you are. Well, God help you if you do come as you are in a lot of churches. What we mean is come as we are.  I teased them about it. I said, use scoundrels because it'd be so much trouble. Stop stealing things. And the F word was wall to wall on our campus with these scoundrels, and I don't mean faith. As they told us where to get off and where to go and I won't sit there and I'll do what I want and I'll smoke if I want and don't tell me what to do. It was out of control as these people came in and there were hundreds and then later thousands of Zacchaeuses and thieves on the cross and women at the well and the prostitutes and the pimps and the drug dealers. And I was busing them in and I could understand how that's uncomfortable for white middle class people. I understood that sociologically, they would never normally mix together. I understand that. And I understand wanting to be with people like you are and like I am, I get that. But when it becomes cliquish and inward looking and when we make this stuff, when we make this ours, acceptance is not a gift. It's a baton. It's a baton. Love is not a gift. Love is not a gift. It's a baton. Grace is not a gift. Kindness is not a gift. Mercy is not a gift. It doesn't belong to you. It doesn't end with you. Everything that God gives you is to be passed on. Everything God gives must move through us. And our church was like this. Our church was like this with acceptance, you know, like, like Gollum, my precious. So my acceptance, I'm accepted. God accepts me. I am loved and all the scriptures, all the theologies and what we did was this. We decided who was worthy of this. So we became selective with the baton passing. Selective baton passing is as bad as no baton passing. I think I can, I think I'll accept you. So I just thought, let's just put the cat among the religious pigeons and bus in these scoundrels and all hell broke loose. And it was the best thing that happened to our church in my opinion. Not in 300 people's opinion who left our church inside two years. As if we'd lost our mind and yet I think we'd found our mind. We'd re-found the essence of all that we preached and sang about suddenly become a reality and no one liked it. I think we thought when the unchurch people showed up, they'd look like Mormons.  They come snapping and biting and smelly and slippery and awkward and resistant. That's how they arrive. And that's how hundreds of them arrived and the church was so upset because this is what people don't understand and we must. Listen to me. Acceptance is not endorsement. Accepting people doesn't mean we agree with their life. We're soft on sin. This is what Jesus risked people believing but he didn't tidy it up. This is why you suffer. You will suffer because to accept people means that you will be judged as being soft on sin because you will accept them without asking them to change. People think you're into cheap grace that you just accept it. You shouldn't do that. You should at first make clear this and this and this needs to change but God didn't do that with you. God accepted you before you were even born. And by the way, while that's on my mind, let me say this. Jesus did not die on the cross for the church. The cross does not belong to us. He died on the cross for the world. The difference between before you saved and after saved is an acceptance. You know more accepted by God after you saved than before. God accepted humanity through the cross. He shed his blood for the world. The difference between saved and unsaved is an acceptance is that after you saved now you are aware of his acceptance. Now you can live as an accepted person. Now you can flourish as a child of God knowing he accepted you. You didn't know that before you got saved but you were still as accepted before you got saved as you were after you got saved. God accepts all of humanity. It's a done deal. Salvation is the awakening to that and the consciousness of that and the joy of that. But we've made it ours. We've made it like we've made acceptance ours like we get the right to charge people for it now which is what the Judaizers were doing. And the apostle Peter had a massive awakening at the house of Cornelius because he has these sheets come down and these unclean animals and you don't realize it's not about animals it's about people when the voice said rice killin' eatin' he said I won't do that and he's not getting the message it's still the same issue he's had for years. He goes to Cornelius's house and hundreds are gathered there because Cornelius had an angel appear and the angel said Cornelius we know you're not a Christian and stuff but we don't really care because we love you you're pretty cool, you're helping people and we like you. So God sent me down to tell you go on to this address here's the GPS for Peter's house go find him, tell him to come here he's gonna tell you some stuff and so he sets in motion this massive symphony it's like a symphony. Over here Peter's getting set up over here Cornelius is having a visitation then the guys are on the way to Peter's house then as he finishes these visions that knock at the door comes from three unclean people from Cornelius's house then he goes to his house and takes friends with him and then in Acts 15 at the Council of Jerusalem Peter tells the story and he said I was just preaching saying now I realize how true it is that God accepts anyone and you think what do you mean you now realize?  Because realization and revelation are two different things it was revelation that showed him he's the son of God realization does not come from God realization is something dawning on you you come into a realization an awakening of something you always knew but didn't know you knew it until you bumped into it enough and now he's at Cornelius's house and the reality is dawning finally the penny's dropping that God accepts all I have not he knows but God accepts all it begins to preach and God says okay I'm done with you now boom then they all get filled with the spirit start jabbering in tongues and Peter said in Acts 15 those that came with me were astonished that God baptized him in the spirit just like he did us at Pentecost why are they astonished? Because baptism in the spirit is simply a massive act of this from heaven it's a fast track boom you're in no one's lifted a hand Peter hasn't made his appeal yet no one's baptized in water no one's gone by the book no one's gone through the system it's just God says okay Peter you can shut up now this is more for your benefit than theirs see now put that away you realize that I love everyone not just Jews okay that's helped you now let me and God goes boom they get filled with the spirit and God didn't ask any of them to do this and that's why the people that came with Peter it says were astonished and I have been astonished at the smallness of our hearts in the church, in this country for Zacchaeuses for millions and millions of people that want to be in church but believe that they can't and many of them don't want to be in church because they've already been to church it was a terrible experience for them and there are people on your minds and on my mind that we wished would be here tonight and wish would be walking with God like you've discovered and this is a massive issue to them and our job is to fill our communities with this message that acceptance precedes change that we are not we are not in the business of charging people for what God gave you freely what you freely receive, freely give away is how this gospel thing works and I know we don't like it I know we like to think we control it but we don't and I'm glad that we don't because if we did some of you wouldn't be here I remember a few months into our journey on this issue couple of years, two or three years in one Sunday night three transvestites came to the service I think three transvestites is a bit overwhelming for a church I think one is probably enough to freak us out but three kids and I could hear the gossip and the elbows flying on the texting about these three guys that had come in to talk me more about our church than them I'm gonna go up to preach, I turn around and there they were to my left sat there these three guys when I finished preaching I called them over and I said it's great to see you guys and by the way, I called them over here and I'm stood here talking to them in front of the church it was staged I want people to see who feel they deserve my time that I'm talking to these people who they maybe don't feel deserve my time and shouldn't be here tonight I wanted to be seen to be giving them my time like Jesus wants to be seen to giving Zacchaeus his time and you his time and I said to these guys great to see you where are you from I wonder who said to be a pastor we're not trying to cause any trouble tonight I never said you were they said we come to this church often I said okay but we've never come dressed as women I said well why have you come dressed as women tonight they said well we are homeless and you feed us in your homeless program two or three times a week but even your homeless team don't know that we also dress as women but we came dressed as women tonight because today was the best dressed transvestite competition in town listen to this and it finished too late for us to get changed before church so while they're talking to me I'm talking to me about what they're saying to me and I'm thinking okay so you would rather come to church and risk the gauntlet of disapproval and if looks could kill you'll be dead in the car park you'd rather risk that than miss church I've got people who live up the road who drive a Mercedes who won't come if it's raining and they won't come especially don't be clapping at no time and they won't come especially if last week someone looked at them awkward and they're offended and miss church for three weeks I got that crowd I got you guys who know it's going to be a rough night if you come like that's going to be rough and they came anyway and I'm thinking which would I rather have hello I said well I want to say three things to you guys I said number one you're the worst looking women I've ever seen because they were terrible I mean some transvestites do it so well you can't tell that wasn't these guys these guys had hairy legs like hadn't shaved terrible makeup I said look guys if this is shocking I said if you want some help some of our girls in makeup will give you some coaching I was dead serious so he said to me no no no he said you don't understand you don't understand he said I won I won today I am the best dressed transvestite in town and showed me his medal and his friend said and I was the runner up and showed me his medal I'm like are you guys kidding me are you telling me you're the best transvestites in town this is wrong you need to lift your game God help us if we go into county or into country we're gonna fail if you're the best that we've got I said pastor that's hilarious what's the second thing you want to say to us I said the second thing is this you lock him in this church anytime dressed as men or women I don't care God doesn't care just lost some of you there but thirdly there are people in this church that do care and I can't protect you from what they may say to you but on behalf of the management come as you are this is what's the third thing I said the third thing is if you come dressed as women please for my sake don't use the women's toilets or there'll be a riot use the men's toilets there'll still be a riot but perhaps less of a riot that I can manage they went high five pastor we can do that you know they came back every week ever since then never once dressed as women and didn't ask them not to do you know why they never came back dressed as women because you know how God gets people to change like you did with Zacchaeus do you know what God does to get you to change he overwhelms you with this when God wants people to change he doesn't do this because that makes you not want to change God doesn't do that with us or with the world so when God wants people to change he's absolutely overwhelms them with this until they start volunteering this Zacchaeus said I want to pay people back want to give half of my wealth to the poor I want to pay back four times I want to stole from people we have no knowledge that Jesus ever asked him to do any of that I think he was so overwhelmed that Jesus risked his own reputation to include this man that Jesus came to his house despite all the criticism and the venom and the poison he got for that he came to this man's house I think Zacchaeus was so overwhelmed by God's love and acceptance of him he starts volunteering making things right fixing things and I think these guys said to themselves when they left our church that night let's not cause this man any trouble let's go and let's not make an issue for him he said come as you are and we believe he meant it but I think the people that he said will not approve of it will give him a hard time not us they'll give him a worse time I think they had a discussion that's what acceptance does acceptance is disarming acceptance melts people's hearts acceptance makes people want to give something back to those that accepted them let's stand here then come on time's gone


It's theCUBE. Here is your host, Jeff Crick. Hi, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're on the ground at San Mateo, California, really getting out into the neighborhood and exploring the internet of things, going out to, you know, there's a lot of talk about internet of things, but who's actually doing it, who's been doing it, and what are some of the specific challenges. So we're really excited to come out to Spacetime Insight and talk to CEO Rob Schilling. Rob, thanks for taking a few minutes. Thanks, Jeff. Great to be here. So for the people that aren't familiar with Spacetime Insight, give us a little background, how long have you been around? How many people do you guys have? Kind of what are the markets that you serve? Sure, we're an enterprise software company. We've been around since 2008, and shipping products since that date. We have over 30 major customers globally that are using our solutions. We have over 180 employees in five continents across the world, and we're growing rapidly. So we're really excited in terms of solving problems for our customers. So as I look at the back wall here behind us, I see a lot of energy companies, and I know you guys talk about doing the research before we came up about asset intensive industries or the people that are using your solutions, and you're helping them manage those assets. So talk about some of those services you provide in your solutions that the customers use you for. Yeah, absolutely, and we kind of started in one of the most complex industries that you could pick, and that's the energy business, especially utilities, transmission, and distribution companies. One of our key flagship customers is California ISO. They're the balancing authority for all of California. They service 30 million customers daily, and their whole role is to keep the lights on 24 by seven. And we're in their control room, we're one third of their control room at any given time, and we're adding insight into their data. So we can show fires in real time how close they're getting to assets, critical infrastructure assets, what's the propensity for failure that's going out there on the grid, and we help them manage and monitor the entire grid for California. And that's interesting, it wasn't that long ago that we're having issues with power in California, right? We're having those brownouts and blackouts, so it's not an insignificant thing to keep that balance, keep the lights on, and really keep things rolling.  Yeah, and if you think about the Internet of Things, it's just now at a different level than it ever was before, right? We've always had silo data systems, we've always had sensors on different parts of OT or IT systems, now how do you bring those together? And the Internet of Things is really just bringing a proliferation of that, right? To the infinite scale. And how do you bring all that data in, make sense of that data, and do it in near real time or real time? And that's what we do extremely well. And you've also got all these legacy systems, right? I mean, if you go into a big energy company, they got a whole lot of assets already in place, not only with trucks and generating devices and transmission devices, but also in the software and systems, and I'm sure there's a lot of old stuff that's been written in COBOL and nobody knows where the source code is. So you've got to work within that environment as well as bring your solution and now add in this whole another layer of data coming in from these sensors. So how do you guys address that? What are you doing to help people out? Sure, and we kind of do that in three different ways. So you really have to have it in context. So what is the meaning at any given time of the relevant data that you're looking at, right? And that becomes more challenging as more data sets become into the mix. The other one is in motion and then in real time, right? So we bring those together in what we call real-time visual analytics and what we term situational intelligence. So that no matter what the context is, customers can look at the relevant data at the right time and make sense of that data. So let's dig down a little bit into the contextual relevance because obviously resources are not infinite, right? I can't just automatically fix everything all the time. I've got to make trade-offs. I've got to make intelligent decisions. I have limited resources. So how are you helping me figure out amongst all the vast places I can spend that next dollar where to put it, how to prioritize and really to put that contextual layer over the sea of data that's flown in? Now that's a great question. Let me give you one relevant example with one of our key customers and that's Hydra One, who's one of the major utilities up in Toronto. They have over four and a half million assets out on the grid, in this case, poles and feeders. And they really needed the ability to one, work with the regulators, show the health of their assets and look at a planning system over 30 years so that they can show what's the risk level. If I change five assets, key assets, every year or every month, what does that do to my risk failure profile over a 30-year period? And then how do you do analytics against that so you can look at the aging infrastructure, looking at the relevant age, the effective age of those assets and the health of each asset at any given time? And we provide that for them and we integrate multiple, multiple data systems. We work with a key partner, in this case, SAP, and really help them solve some key problems that they're facing. So that's interesting. So you're integrating with SAP, which I'm sure is kind of an asset management system as part of their ERP that they've had forever. At the same time, you gotta pay attention. We have a ton of wildfires obviously out in the West. I'm sure that's a big concern of getting the energy out. So you're spanning both of those systems, the SAP ERP, ancient stuff, as well as getting out on the pole, getting the data from the fire people in terms of what's going on. That's right. And really, we don't have any, I mean, limitation in terms of which system we can pull data from. So it can be your core ERP, it can be your legacy custom applications, or it can be new technologies where you're putting sensors out on every device. Yeah, so let's drill down into visualization, right? A lot of buzz and visualization tableau is in the marketplace click, they get a lot of activity in the stock market, so we hear about them a lot. But the trick with visualization to me is always, how do you actually make it meaningful? So what is the secret to making visualization actually meaningful, especially as you talk about the context, the situational awareness? Because what's meaningful now, say with the fires in the West, is not necessarily the same information I need to worry about at maybe year in planning cycle or bringing a new something online or connecting with a new source. So how does your systems kind of help people sort through that so that they're looking at the right data at the right time to make the right decision? Well, and that's your exactly right, Jeff, and it is a daunting task for these customers, especially energy space, but also in logistics, water and gas, they all have the same issue. They have aging infrastructure, they have millions of assets, and how do you bring insight into what's relevant at any given time? And that's our ability to look at things contextually, based on any situation, and our innate ability based on our patents to really look at data in a very smart way. And do you build pre-canned scenarios that kind of drive that situational awareness? Do you work with the clients to build scenario planning? Do you work with, I don't know, Accenture or system integrators to build that? How do you kind of build a library of scenarios or situations so that the right filters and the right kind of data information is served up? Really all of the above. So where there's a solution that we can repeat and there's enough value to a customer, we will go and build that ourselves and then we'll resell that solution. There's also times where it might be a new environment, a new type of solution that a customer wants to go tackle. One case is Oculus, right? We've taken the Oculus system, the RIF system that Facebook bought. We've taken that, built that into a demo system that's extremely powerful. It's immersive technology, we also have a patent on how you can integrate that data and customers are coming to us and saying, okay, we wanna look at one from a safety perspective, I wanna go down into a substation and I wanna look at areas of, one, my data tied to, hey, there might be a leak, a gas leak, how do I look at that in a meaningful way? So we can help them from a safety perspective. The other one is if you think of all the LiDAR data and now we have drones, all that data that's gonna be pulled out, how do I look at that in a real-time view?  I don't have to send a plane to go over, now we have these major fires here in California and it's a lot of territory. So how can I take an image, bring that back, bring it to the right expert so that they can look at that image in real-time and come back based off of the quality of that immersive technology and then say, this is what you should go do to solve that problem. So that's actually, that's a whole different kind of angle on visualization. That's not a billion data points to make a pretty picture and try to see some actionable insight but you're really combining things you can see, real things with the data that feed it. It almost sounds more like a heads-up display that you would see kind of in a classic cockpit scenario where you're seeing through the data but you're also seeing the data that impacts what you're seeing at the same time. No, you're absolutely right. And from day one, we've always believed that the power is in not only visualization but analytics and bringing those together in a very meaningful way and that's where situational intelligence is extremely powerful. So let's shift gears a little bit and talk about regulation. How only did you pick a complicated industry to serve in terms of the complexity of delivery but also heavily regulated and I know you do a lot of international travel, you guys are all over the place. So talk about the role of regulation and specifically how's regulation in the government keeping up with these crazy changes in speed and the way things are moving in terms of the technology? Can they keep up? Are they changing the regulations? How's that all kind of working out?  The question is over time, what is the purpose or the meaningful value add to regulation? As we're seeing now in the markets, deregulation is coming. There's a lot of new technology that's coming out that's really displacing the need to go to your utility provider for energy, right? You saw Tesla's announcement, you can go off grid with Solar City and Tesla and other systems and not have to rely on your utility but the utility plays a critical role. They know what they're doing. This is very complex. So there's areas of regulation I think are very critical for them and that they need but also they're starting to invest in new technologies and that's where we come in. And we have over 30 major utilities globally that are using our solutions because they wanna innovate. They understand the problems and they understand how to get there. It's just complex so it can't happen overnight. Okay, so before we wrap and again, I appreciate you taking the time. Let's kinda look down the road because all we hear about from Cisco is the internet of things on great TV commercials all the time and GE is really pushing hard for what they call the industrial internet. So a lot more sensors, a lot more connectivity. You talked about drones, you talked about this expansion of really the internet layer. How is that gonna change things for you? What are the specific challenges? Because you've got a lot of experience in these big data sets. How, what's the good side, what's the bad side of not having this deluge of new additional data into that system? Well the good side and you mentioned both GE and Cisco, we love both of those companies, they're world-class organizations and the beauty is they're making all these devices smarter. GE's making the devices smarter, Cisco's making the network smarter. We come on top of that in a holistic way and take advantage of their great work to even make it more powerful for our customers. Awesome, so future looks bright? Future looks bright. All right, awesome. Well, Rob, thanks for taking a few minutes out of your busy day. Rob Schilling, the CEO of Spacetime Insight. I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching The Key. We'll see you next time.


자기 স�aku প�なんです, জুযাভ঺������া পরনুসবা������ীীীা������ীবাীবাবারবারবাবী���ব সবুযাবাবিব� deputy গাবররুরীাববববববব আযরবববববববববববববববববব অপরররররর� it might include the internal departments as well as the others stakeholders so in this second part of the video we shall take up two learning objectives one is what are the various forms of relationship management that part we shall try to address then we shall also understand the tips of managing customer loyalty and development so let us take the first objective that what are the various forms of relationship management so there are basically three forms of relationship management their learners you have to be clear that what are the various forms of relationship management it's basically concentrate on three areas we shall discuss these three areas one by one these three areas are one is operational CRM the second one is analytical CRM the third one is collaborative CRM operational CRM is basically how the CRM is made functional analytical CRM is how the databases how the analytics are derived from the CRM exercises and the third one is how the collaborations are made so that CRM practices can be made much more effective so these are basically the three areas in which we can talk about the various forms of relationship management let us first take the first one the operational CRM what this operational CRM is all about so as i have told you operational CRM is basically keeping the CRM functional in the organization so how can we keep the CRM functional in an organization we can have three areas one is salesforce automation the second one is marketing automation third one is service automation some of salesforce automation one pharmaceutical company is having various zones suppose eastern india zone western india zone northern zone southern zone suppose within eastern india suppose say bhar and the west bangal say north eastern region suppose north eastern region the different states are there we need state there are different districts the different territory manager are there suppose that particular pharmaceutical company has to target the a category doctors and the territory managers or the medical after visiting a category doctor has to submit the report online on daily basis so next day morning the marketing manager of this particular pharmaceutical company will come to know that how many a category doctors were visited on the previous day that is salesforce automation you see based on salesforce automation we can map we can go for identification of different customers we can go for identification of different opportunities suppose a new hospital is coming up at at a location say x so accordingly we can add x in our territory coverage map and accordingly we can schedule our visits we can think about quota allocation to our salespeople we can think about our monitoring of the sales performance of the particular territory managers of a particular zone of a particular district of a particular state we can think about like the orders received from the various distributors talkies so this is all about sales force automation so entire selling and distribution function can be automated likewise the idea could be another automation that is a marketing automation suppose the advertisements one particular marketer is going to release an advertisement of one particular brand in suppose hundred plus channels in hundred plus programs so hundred plus channels plus hundred plus programs suppose that advertisement will be repeated in several programs suppose five times a day in some cases it could be ten times a day you see the entire media scheduling or the entire motion or the entire phasing of the advertisements can be done with the help of the software so that is basically marketing automation we can go for planning creation and execution of multi-touch multi-senial we can think about kiosk how many kiosks are operating what is the response rate in the kiosk like that we can think about automation of the entire marketing exercise likewise we can also think about another aspect of operational CRM that is service automation suppose when we are processing a motorcycle or a car we are supposed to go for the mandatory services first service second service automatically we get the alert in our mobile phones the sms or say whatsapp message or maybe a phone call by the service outlets so these are all service automation and suppose after the service is available say two days after we receive a call that you had your services done two days before how is the how is your vehicle performing right what is the status are you satisfied these are all service automation the software will take care of so these are operational CRM some other things you read the SLM it would be very very easy to for you to understand then second one is analytical CRM analytical CRM as i told you it's mostly about the analysis of the data in analytical CRM the primary aim of entire customers relationship management is to critically analyze the customer data who are the customers how often do they visit why do they visit are they satisfied when was their last purchase right what is their visiting pattern and we get all this data from the database and ultimately based on this database we can think about suppose in a retailer that one particular item has been displayed that what is the footfall in that particular location location what is the sale of that particular item what is the trial sale what is the repeat sales we can go for analysis of all these informations so analytical CRM basically making use of techniques such as data mining data then after that mining data we'll have to correlate the data that what is the relationship between display and sales what is the relationship between satisfaction and increase sales we can go for lot many analysis so at the same time it helps us in identifying the gaps in our marketing activities so that we can take up good kind of business strategy effective business strategy so that we can go for corrective measures so that is basically done with the help of gap analysis and that will be facilitated by the database so basically analytical CRM it's all about data analysis we are sitting in a storehouse of data how are you going to make use of data how are you going to report the gaps in the data and how are you going to adopt the corrective measures of that data that is basically analytical CRM the third aspect is collaborative CRM as I told you customer relationship management is not only about managing customers it's all about managing the supply system managing the various departments suppose in a card servicing it's not only the customer relationship it's about managing the service system also because ultimately if the card is serviced well then only the customers will be satisfied so in collaborative CRM the primary aim is to incorporate external stakeholders the supplier suppose we talk about the Maruti Alto the quality of Maruti Alto will depend upon the components assembled in Maruti Alto is not it tires glasses mattresses bearings engines so many things is not it so ultimately the assemblies of all these things will determine the quality of the vehicle so it's collaborative it's not just only by Maruti Maruti will have to have a networking relationship with its vendors with its suppliers which is distributors is not it so that is very important so collaborative CRM is taking an integrated approach with all the collaborators so primary objective of collaboration is to enhance the quality the quality of the service of Maruti Alto will depend upon the quality of service received from all these stakeholders because ultimately its quality the being offered will lead to enhance customer satisfaction and if the customers can be satisfied then we can expect them to retain them if we can retain them for repeat processes then we can expect that the customers will be loyal to us and that is the ultimate goal because if we can have a loyal customers we shall be able to save time we shall be able to save money in acquisition of new customers so today social media many of the marketers have got their social media presence they have got their whatsapp they have got their facebook account so many of them they have got their own repository website so they are highly present in the social media so collaborative CRM increases customer engagement they can have a review of their various parts various components various modalities and ultimately all these things help in getting the trust of the customer and if the trust can be improved the organization can help in adding its learning curve to do better in its service operations so then ultimately all these things will help us in improving the customer loyalty loyalty programs are offered both retailers also as i have mentioned in the supermarkets departmental stores the green cards are given also in the airline industry the frequent players are given the options of frequent player discount or they are given sometimes an option of right better different options in terms of their say pre-year flight or say during air during air journey or maybe the post flight services retail cooperatives they pioneer the loyalty programs they mostly go on the purchase discount in the western euro the retail cooperatives develop and one of the basic essence of development of the retail cooperatives in the 20th century was their loyalty programs so it's a process discount more and more you process from our store more and more you will be entitled for the discount so that helps in improving the loyalty provided you give the good service and modern loyalty programs are also often consumers based on points the points aren't and these points can be redeemed and these can point points can be redeemed for a broad selection of merchandise so that's how the loyalty is induced so for all these my dear learners for CRM practices database is very very important managing the internal data warehouse and data mining capacity establishing the core relationship identifying the patterns and that ultimately will help us in determining the loyalty programs in executing the loyalty programs in evaluating the effectiveness of the loyal programs so development of the customer database is very very important and ultimately we shall have to go for an emotional bondage with our customers so customers will be emotionally bonded provided we are able to give them personalized service and this is facilitated by the development and application of CRM practices ultimately as i have told you the marketer will not occur the product just by the marketer marketer will occur the product based on the networking relationship it will have with its suppliers which is vendors so that is also very very important and ultimately we all should strive for the satisfaction of the customers then only we can afford to have customer loyalty customer retention and then only we shall be able to minimize the cost of customer acquisition we shall come to the concluding part of the discussion of this unit in the third video thank you


Hello, welcome to episode two of the podcast we're calling Sustainable Development Goals, Evaluating Progress for a Brighter Future. I'm Doug Hoffman from DEVOL, the German Institute for Development Evaluation, and I'm your host. In episode one of the series, we heard how important it was to consider the effect of climate risks in the evaluation of strategies and programs designed to make progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. That's certainly critical. And how are these evaluations done? What are the best methods, and what are the potential stumbling blocks and challenges? Why have so few SDG evaluations been done up to now? That's what we'll consider in this episode, because we know these evaluations are complex. Only some countries have done them, and the process has learned lessons that can be shared with others. For starters, we'll think about how to define the scope and the focus of the evaluation. Sometimes a major challenge. We'll hear about the first ever national evaluation of SDGs carried out by Finland in 2018 and 2019, where Finland took the bold decision to look at the whole set of all 17 SDGs together. And we're also here from Costa Rica that delivered an evaluation report at the end of 2020 that had been two years in the making. And I'm glad to say that the lessons it learned have been captured in a parallel process that was carried out along with the evaluation itself. We'll hear more about that shortly. So let's get started. And that means I'm first going to ask my three guests to introduce themselves. Good day, everyone. My name is Karolina Suniga, and I work for the Ministry of Planning of Costa Rica, which is the steering institution regarding evaluation for the public administration. Specifically, I work in the evaluation unit. And well, it's my pleasure to be here and be able to share our work. Hello, my name is Satu Lahtenoja, and I'm a senior expert on sustainable development in an independent think tank called Demos Helsinki in Finland. And I was leading the first national SDG policy evaluation in Finland. So in my work and research, I am looking for different ways to accelerate sustainability transformations. And I see evaluation as one of the ways to do that. Hello, how are you? My name is Gonzalo Hernandez-Licona. I'm from Mexico, and I'm the director of the multidimensional poverty network. And I'm also working with the Global Evolution Initiative, UNICEF, IDB, and others in terms of evaluation. I've done evaluation for the past 25 years. So I'm very excited to be here. Thank you very much. Well, thank you for those introductions. Let's start with the basics, definition of SDG evaluation. Perhaps we should be clear what we mean when we say an evaluation of the sustainable development goals, or when we talk about country-led evaluations. Gonzalo, would you like to start us off? OK, thank you. Thank you, Dick. I believe that the first thing we need to remember is that is what the SDGs are about. They are not only about a collection of goals to advance on them separately. The SDGs have principles, for instance, integration and coherence, or leave no one behind. So, for instance, in integration, what we mean on the SDGs is we have to advance on the objectives and the targets together, right? So the SDGs emphasize the inter-linguages between goals and targets, sometimes the trade-offs between the dimensions. So it is important that an evaluation of SDGs should follow those principles, and, for instance, to address objectives at the same time. So give an example, even in a family, we need to move together with education, health, and nutrition. Otherwise, a child cannot go to school if those three elements are not addressed at the same time. It means that we need to evaluate, in that case, that the family is moving on those objectives together. The same is happening in the evolution of SDGs. We need to move forward by taking into account the advances in all of them at the same time. Okay. Now, how many SDGs does it take to make foreign SDG evaluation? Do we have to look at all 17 SDGs? Or is it enough to just look at a single SDG? What's the experience of Costa Rica? Well, that's a tough question, especially for us, because I don't specifically think that I have an answer for that because I don't think there's a magic number. We have this conversation in our institution, especially in our evaluation team, when we were talking about the next national evaluation agenda, and we came to the conclusion that it's necessary for us to identify what is specifically the information that we need. And, well, in that case, it's not about how many SDGs we're going to evaluate, it's more about what else we need to know regarding the process of the sustainable development. And in our case, we haven't performed like a specific SDG evaluation, like Nigeria did or like Finland did, but we do perform country-led evaluation with an SDG component. And we include this component in every evaluation since 2019. And for us, it's very important to identify what is specifically that we need to know and then evaluating that specific component. In this case, we're talking about the biodiversity and climate change evaluation, which is one of the evaluation inside our national evaluation agenda with a broad analysis of the SDGs. So I don't think there's any specific number, and I completely agree with what Gonzalo just said. It's more important to identify how we're going forward in the sustainable development. Thinking about what you just said, how does evaluation relate to the SDG policy cycle? Gonzalo, what would be your take? So let me go back a bit of what Karina said rightly. I mean, there's no magic number about how many goals should we take into account to name it an SDG evaluation. I think as long as it reflects that we are evaluating systems and as long as we include in this the policy cycle, right, which means we have to understand that our evaluations should improve what we do. So and as long as we include some of the principles, like integration, leave no one behind, resilience, universality, right? So for instance, if we want to evaluate the no hunger SDG number two objective, so we need to assess the various elements that take us to have zero hunger. We need to assess the food production, waste, consumption, partners, nutrition, markets, green solutions to the food processes. So we have to evaluate the policy of zero hunger instead of one single program. I'm taking into account that we need to put it in the cycle of the policy in the government, meaning that many actors should improve according to the evaluation that we are producing. That sounds very complex, taking into account the policy and all the actors involved. If we just think about one SDG, Finland has opted to look at all 17 SDGs at the same time. How did you tackle this challenge of having 17 SDGs to look at so many sectors to look at and all the different stakeholders? Yes, in Finland we really did look at all 17 SDGs because we wanted to have a comprehensive evaluation. So having an overview of where the country is and then it didn't make sense to leave something out. However, we didn't look at all 17 SDGs with the same depth. I think one of the key challenges for our evaluation in Finland was how to cover the key substance issues in a reasonable depth with restricted resources. I think this is one of the general concerns in sustainability evaluations when the topics are often very broad. In our case, the solution was to find the top five most burning sustainability concerns by indicator analysis, surveys, expert interviews. We then found that competence and societal stability were one of the strengths of the country and then there were many systemic needs for improvement, including energy system use of forests and the global footprint of our consumption as examples. Okay, so you clearly went for a prioritization of the SDGs and looked at which ones are most relevant to the country. We've just heard Gonzalo talk about the SDG Agenda 2030 principles that they are important, like he mentioned coherence, equity, participation, leaving no one behind. How did Finland cater to the principles underlying the 2030 agenda? Or did you basically look at the targets and the interactions within the 17 SDGs? I think it's very reasonable to evaluate the policy against its principles and priorities. And I think the 2030 agenda principles can also work well as an evaluation criteria. In the case of Finland, we used the focus areas and policy principles of Finland as the criteria as Finland had defined, sort of own sustainable development policy principles and those have of course a lot common with the 2030 agenda principles. So they include like long term action and transformation, then policy coherence and global partnership and totally commitment and participation. So in our evaluation, we used those as criteria asking basically are the policies coherence is our sustainable development policy creating long term transformation. And so of course, super, super big questions in one evaluates. It is always difficult to tackle SDG evaluation because it's such a broad topic. It seems so broad. Let me move into the next set of questions looking at what is the value of doing an SDG evaluation and already talked a little bit about it. Within the UN Economic and Social Council, the ECOSOP reporting mechanism has been set up for the SDGs. Know that each country is asked to report on the state of implementation of the 2030 agenda in what is called the National Voluntary Reviews of VNRs for short. Gonzalo, about the importance of doing SDG evaluations, what can you tell us in relation to the VNRs? I mean, how is evaluation coming into the exercise of doing voluntary national reviews? Okay, so we just mentioned a little bit of that before that it is important to evaluate the forest and not only the tree or the leaf, we have to see the whole picture. I mean, development is complex, Dirk. It was, if development was only about cash transfer programs, then development would have been easy. But development is about incentives to grow and to innovate about balance of power between agents. It's about addressing various dimensions. And therefore, what we, I believe, we need to do when we write and we produce VNRs, Voluntary National Reports, is that, of course, we make accountable of what we're doing in the country. We describe what is happening in the country in terms of SDGs. But we also have to be critical about what we're doing. Right? It may be common that VNRs look very, very nice, because sometimes the country's put there that everything is wonderful. And therefore, we, in a true VNR, we should put our advances, the full picture of development that we are facing in the country, as well as the challenges. So we all could learn and we all could move forward with advances and challenges. Let me ask the same question to you, Carolina, for the evaluation that you did in Costa Rica. Why do we need evaluation when we have already Voluntary National Reports? And Costa Rica has filed Voluntary National Reports already. What about the relation of the VNR with the evaluation of SDGs from your point of view? Well, in our case, we see it more like a process, because for sure, evaluation is an input for the VNR. And the VNRs are not only for accountability, but to ask ourselves if are we on the right path? What else is needed to achieve our commitments? And for example, in our case, we have been identifying as part of the several evaluation findings that programs and projects, strategies, they all need to design considering the SDGs, because otherwise it will be hard in the future to achieve them. And overall, we see an opportunity because the VNR becomes another input also to identify priorities in evaluation. In our case, we are at the door of a new government. This means a new evaluation agenda. And we have to ponder what needs to be evaluated. Is it a specific SDG? Is it a complete, as Satu said before, like a complete policy regarding a specific SDG? We don't know, but we need to identify what is most important for us. And that is information that the VNR can definitely give us. So we see it as a cycle, evaluation is an input, but also is the voluntary national reports. That seems to be very interesting that the movement goes both ways. Evaluation, ideally informing the VNRs and the VNRs informing SDG evaluation. Would you agree on that? Or how does that work in practice, Satu? Yes, I very much agree with the others. And that's how it goes also in Finland. And what inspires me is that with the help of an evaluation, we can really have an overview of where we are in terms of SDG implementation and then understand where the challenges are. And then based on that, and that is often not done in a VNR, is to develop then recommendations on how do we then come closer to reaching the goals. And to get there, in my opinion, the evaluation should be at the same time of participatory, developmental and future oriented, or at least all of those were needed in the Finnish case. And there, of course, VNR is one important tool in there. Dear, can I add something else? Sure, go ahead. No, I think taking the example of Finland and Costa Rica for the VNRs is very important, because they include evaluation processes in the VNRs. They include challenges in the VNRs. And I think that's very important because as I said before, where you put a VNR, where everything is really beautiful in the country, it is not the way we have to do it. So example of these countries are very important. Okay, I think that is an excellent point. Thanks for signing this to us. We've heard a lot about the benefits of doing an STG evaluation. So what strikes me a little bit is the discrepancy with very few evaluations on STGs that have actually been done. We're now already seven years into the 2030 agenda. So what seems to be the major difficulty? Is it finding the right start? That is like the major hurdle. Would you agree on that, Gonzalo? No, I believe because as I said, developing is complex. The agenda is comprehensive and therefore complex. We were used or used to evaluate single projects or single programs. So from going to evaluating a single program to evaluate a whole full agenda, that's tough. But I believe that that countries we should carry on in trying to do this with simple questions. For instance, how did the concept of development change in the country as a result of the agenda? What happened in the country when the STG arrived? What was the change in terms of development strategy? What is the sustainable development theory of change in your country? Does the country have a solid data generation process on institutions? And a very important question that I believe it's, I mean, it's a tough one, but we have to address it is how are the national priorities made compatible with the 2030 agenda? And I think that's a key element. As a very key element, how the country is combining the priorities that already the country had with the new STG agenda. I think addressing that question with clarity is a good start, for instance. So aligning national priorities to the STG agenda, you tell us that is the most important thing we have to focus on. Carolina, taking your experience with the evaluation in Costa Rica, does that ring true? I mean, you've actually done an evaluation. How did you get started? Yeah, definitely. For us, it was exactly like that, because we were the first country in the world right to reaffirm a high level collective commitment to achieve the STGs. And for us, this meant put the 2030 agenda as a country priority. And however, we include this specific topic into evaluations until 2019. Of course, there was a lot of management to do between the identifying of how to measure the indicators, where to get the information, setting governments, governance, I'm sorry, but for a moment, I think that we forgot about evaluation and the STGs. And I think it's just like Gonzalo just said, it's how we combine the priorities of the country with the international commitments.  So it's not easy, for sure it's not easy, but it is about make it happen. It is about what is important. Yeah, this is to me a very important point. You have to get started. You can't wait for everything to fall in place and then move ahead. You have to identify national priorities. You have to take decisions. And as Satu earlier explained by expert interviews, etc., involved in stakeholders, and then moving ahead. I would like to ask in the concrete case of Finland, because we have the country experience. Satu, can you give us as an example, how did you go about defining scope and focus of the evaluation? In our Finnish case, the focus and scope of the evaluation was quite broad and it was defined in the terms of reference. And that already then included also the evaluation questions. However, we then shaped those together with the evaluation team and with the steering committee when we started to work. And if I very briefly reflect on the choices we did, I think this concentrating on these certain sustainability issues instead of trying to cover all in equal depth was a good choice. But then, however, in addition to detecting on problems, I think we could have given more attention also to strengths and in particular teams and questions in which a clear sustainability contribution could be made also globally. So by asking what is the global sustainability handprint of your country and what it could be that your country contributes to the global sustainability. I think that is an aspect that is maybe not the case with each and every STG evaluation, putting the country in a global context. Usually from what I've seen, it works the other way around that the global context is the STGs and that is put into a national context. So that's interesting your perspective that you're giving us. Something else that we've been talking about a little bit already, mentioning here and there, but I think deserves a little bit more attention is the participatory process that an STG evaluation might be or should be. How do we go about designing a participatory process? How far was the evaluation participatory in Finland? Yes, as we all know, these participatory processes, they tend to take a lot of time, but I would say it is really crucial. So in the Finnish case, we had several groups we wanted to involve into evaluation. We had a steering group with representatives from the ministries, and then we had a support group with like 20 experts from different fields, sustainability, evaluation experts, civil society. Then we had international experts, and this was very, very relevant and useful.  And then of course the Finnish parliament, especially there, the committee of the future. So what we did was actually quite a lot of interviews, workshops, different discussion events. And one thing that worked really well was that we co-designed the recommendations together with about 40 stakeholders. And this was a way to really engage and also empower them. So when the evaluation report was published, there were actually no surprises for this group of people anymore. And they were then also highly engaged to disseminate and work further with the recommendations. Okay, this is a very valuable point, which probably holds true for evaluations in general involving stakeholders in the whole process, in the design, and as you just said in the formulation of the recommendations. Gonzalo, from a more theoretical point of view, would you see any specific challenges for participation when designing evaluation of the STGs as compared to a regular evaluation? No, I believe that because we are trying to deal with not only with a single program or a single project evaluation, but we are dealing trying to address the full agenda. Of course, we need more people and we need more stakeholders and we need them to be on board on the evaluation and to be frank and to know that they will benefit as well for the evaluation. And that is not that that easy, right? So I'm really impressed with what Nigeria, Finland, Costa Rica have been doing in terms of evaluating the STGs because that implies a lot of participatory process. Okay, excellent. There is another topic often forgotten when we talk about the design phase of an evaluation and that is communication. Should communication already be considered in the design phase? What is your opinion? Or is it better to first see the results, the recommendations, and on that basis define a communication strategy? What are your experiences in Finland and Costa Rica? Carolina, maybe you go first. Sure. I think that you can have a specific strategy, depending of the evaluation, sure. But in our case, this is kind of a standardized already because we evaluate public interventions and it is our job to share the final results with anyone who's interested. So, yes, in our case, we pretty much do at least three things for every evaluation. We first upload the final report in our web page. And of course, we encourage the institutions involved to do the same. We also organize at least three final presentation of the results of the evaluation, considering different target population. And at least one of those presentations should be like an open one to be able to invite different stakeholders, especially citizenship, because it's very important for us for people to know what we're doing and to use also the evaluation results. And we also develop different materials. This is different for every evaluation, but for example, we do different videos, documents, infographics. This kind of depends on the evaluation, but it's usually some kind of material that can be distributed easily. And we participate in workshops. We also attend to a specific request to share the results. We participate also in conferences, because it is important for people to know that this kind of evaluation are being performed. In Finland, did you consider communication as important in the moment when you designed the STJ evaluation? Or did that come in later? Yes, I think it's very important to think about it in the design phase already. So first, I think timing is important. So in our case, the timing of the evaluation was good, as the results were published right under the parliamentary elections. So there was interest towards the results directly. Secondly, what Caroline also mentioned are these visualizations and key numbers are very important in communication. So it's good to require them and also leave resources for that. And then thirdly, I think it's very important to leave time and resources for communication in general after the publication of the results. In Finland, we then as an evaluation team went to discuss the results to the parliament. I counted in total eight times. So we had five different separate discussions with different political groups and three different committee meetings, even several committees together, which doesn't happen that often. And we were then also invited to present our findings in the government negotiations. And I guess our work had at least a small contribution to the fact that actually the government program of the current government in Finland is based on sustainable development. So we are at the moment quite lucky. Congratulations to Finland. I think this is really a great example for others to follow along. We're almost coming to the end of this episode and maybe wrapping up a little bit, looking at the different topics. And obviously, we could have delved into much, much further. And this is just starting off discussion on those topics. But maybe instead of me giving overall conclusions, which would be very, very difficult, I would like to do a final round briefly giving the microphone to each one of you for one main message to formulate a recommendation or one central thought for our audience. If you would start, Karolina. I would like to bring a topic that we talked about at the beginning and throughout the whole episode. And it's about the principles of the 2030 agenda. I think that Gonzalo talked a lot about this. But we present times with Corona showed us that we need to have them present at all times, not only for evaluation, but for planification, for planning, any kind of intervention also. We have to have them present if we want to achieve common goals as a country. During the whole policy cycles, and of course, in our work as evaluators, we need to know how we're going forward. If we're going in the right way, we need to share experiences, resources, knowledge, making sure that we're going in the same direction, working together. I think it's important to have them present. Moving over to Finland, Satu, what would be your main message, main thought? Quite difficult to choose only one main message, but perhaps for this audience, I would highly encourage you to use external experts, meaning also your experts and contacts from other countries. It helped us a lot and I think raised the level also. So use your networks to get more perspective. Thank you very much. Last but not least, we're moving over to Mexico, Gonzalo. Thank you, Dirk. I believe that having evaluations beyond single programs and single projects is a key element for the SDG. You have to evaluate policies. We have to address objectives at the same time when possible. We need to do it in a participatory way. We need to look beyond the obvious, I believe. I mean, for instance, it's very simple. It's very common that countries just link what they were doing before with SDGs and they say, hey, we are addressing the SDGs because everything that we used to do is linked. We have to address that and challenge a little bit the country and challenge a little bit the government saying, hey, we need something else in terms of a sustainable agenda if we really would like to put it forward. And evaluation can help in understanding that. So thank you very much, Dirk, Satu and Karolina, I'm glad that we're here together. Well, thank you very much from my side to our three guests, to Karolina Zuniga from the Ministry of National Planning and Economic Policy in Costa Rica, to you, Gonzalo and Anders Likona, Senior Research Fellow at the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation III, IEE, and also to you, Sartu Lechtenoje, Senior Expert on Sustainable Development of Deimos Helsinki, Independent Think Tank from Finland. Then I would like to finish with a reference to the website, the IIED website, where you can pick up additional information linked to the organization's website reference material to delve deeper into the topics we've just been discussing. And as a last point, finish with a look ahead at Episode III, the final episode of this podcast series. In this episode, we will be covering the aspects of implementation and use of STG evaluations in order to accelerate progress for reaching the STGs by 2030. I hope you'll join us. Thank you very much and goodbye.