Adobe Connect is a web conferencing platform that enables users to create presentations, online training materials, and learning modules. The product is entirely Adobe Flash-based and has several add-ons for customizing its software to suit each users’ unique needs.
$50
per host/per month
PiiQ by Cornerstone
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Cornerstone’s PiiQ is an SMB offering formerly known as Sonar6. PiiQ is aimed at small-to-medium sized businesses and includes core learning management and performance management systems, including content creation, mobile accessibility, and in-product reporting.
It is a great resource for evaluating, refining, and combining abilities and essential experiences in the growth of the sales team training; It is productive and lucrative in terms of distance knowledge transfer, and it reduces employee training financing and expenditures. I really like the ability to collaborate as a group on a huge research project even when we are not in the same country.
Enables employees to draft work goals and collaborate with their supervisors on a final version - improves mutual understanding right up front.
Combines performance goal ratings with competency ratings and provides a blended score. Simplifies the goal weighting so you don't have to do any calculations.
9-box matrix provides useful definitions and descriptions so managers can prepare development notes or plans for individual employees.
The overall connection and lag sometimes are disruptive. This may not be due to the platform as a whole, connectivity, and strength of the signal is probably a factor but it can get glitchy sometimes.
More features for remote desktop options, whiteboarding, or screen sharing to actively resolve issues would be great while collaborating.
Online support or forums to help assist with issues aren't as prevalent as you think they'd be. More individual resources to assist with issues would be helpful.
Would be good to have have a virtual "top level" (eg board) user built in to allow senior execs without a direct manager to be able to be set up with KPIs instead of having to create a dummy user
Reports have difficulty downloading if pop ups disabled or in some browser environments
When competencies are updated while a cycle is open, any changes don't effect that open cycle but only future ones. Would be nice to be able to have the option to apply changes to existing "open" cycles
The longer you use Adobe Connect, the longer you are likely to use it. Because you can build more and more resources over time, creating rooms that you re-use, recorded content you can repurpose, and tools that form the basis of ever increasing productivity, the more you use Connect, the more productive you become. Unlike competing products where, with every meeting you essentially start over -- setting up your resources for each meeting -- in my Connect rooms, I have highly tuned tools to accomplish my knowledge transfer goals. When I want to conduct another session - I send a link out to the appropriate room and instantly we are all focusing on getting a job done together. This ability of Adobe Connect to make you productive at an ever quickening rate is a competitive advantage
It's not that CSB isn't a decent performance management system, but we have decided to go with just one vendor (Workday) for an HRIS/performance management/payroll system so we can directly relate pay to performance. We are more interested in having just one system that "talks" to the other pieces instead of having to work with several vendors. It reduces the hassle of having to communicate with different support teams, having different contracts, and so on.
As sophisticated a product as Adobe Connect, the ease of use is outstanding. In my experience, even a user with very little knowledge of Adobe Connect can begin using and even leading sessions with very little training to get started with the basic features. Additional training is needed to become comfortable with the number of available features, but learning curve even for those is no steeper than would normally be expected from similar software.
There are specific things within the goals and competencies that are user-friendly. For example, the rating slider isn't great in my opinion. You can slide in between ratings which can create some odd scoring (if you use scoring). It seems a better solution would be a drop down where you select your rating. There are also some glitches in the system and have been told Cornerstone is aware of them but are focused on delivering new features. There are workarounds, but that doesn't seem to be a great answer.
The saving process slows it down. It doesn’t auto save. If you leave a page, it will sometimes warn you, but not always. When you hit the save button, a window pops up that says creating/saving packets. It feels very archaic.
The customer support of Adobe connect is professional and well-skilled for resolving our minor and major issues. Moreover, it has almost all the features that will provide you a secure connection, with people across the world. Education institutes can also implement this software. On the basis of its quality and technology, I will surely advise you to try it once.
My assistant could better address this issue. My perception is that there is not immediate assistance, and that there can be a wait for help. That is not a negative, just a perception. I have not used support in two years.
The ability to have most of the functionality of a full LMS at a fraction of the cost is huge. I can create manage and deploy both synchronous and asynchronous training based on the situation and all of my training is tracked through a series of easily created reports
Prices do not seem to vary much among resellers of the Adobe Connect hosted license; the only price variation you're likely to find are among the audio providers. When implementing, you may also wish to look into expanding the amount of storage you are allowed on the server to avoid any problems later on as your library of files starts to build up
I think we could have done a better job of rolling out the tool to our managers. We were under a tight timeline. In the training, we showed them everything and said go do it by this date. Looking back, I would have done it in pieces: for example, 2 weeks to write goals, 2 weeks to get sign-off from direct reports. I just let them go at it. Since then we’ve moved to agile development environment and are applying the technique to everything. In future would only do through change sprint. It is a big change I didn’t take it seriously enough.
I had a team of 3 project managing. You need a champion from every department to make sure you’re getting it right and to make sure what’s happening is communicated. It’s not something you can do without input from department heads
Actually, it was the other way around....we were using Adobe Connect, company-wide, then switched over to Zoom, mostly, I think, as a cost-cutting measure. But some Learning & Development folks campaigned to be allowed to retain some Adobe Connect licenses (for example, one L&D area had literally over 250 room layouts that their course facilitators could just jump into and use to deliver a course on short notice), which also allows some of us to continue to publish Presenter and Captivate modules to the Adobe server. (But, even those of us who still have Adobe Connect licenses use Zoom for most regular business meetings.)
Lesson.ly has been great to work with but it is a very clear and simple, user-friendly system that anyone can pick up with very little training as it is self-explanatory. It also has a great mobile interface and lots of different features that are easy to add for the admin but really impactful for the user.
Save on time - our instructors and people that use the platform can teach more classes and more often than in-person training and time traveling.
We cut down on spending. When we offer training using Connect - we do not have to spend on meals, hard copy materials, and reserving a venue to deliver training.
We increase our training sales significantly but offering Connect as an alternative - any unforeseen cancellations to a public class can result in transferring to a remote online Connected class.
It's tool and it's only as good as the person wielding it. The investment in PiiQ was accompanied by a quarterly cadence and manager feedback training. We feel like our employees are given regular feedback and bonuses are tied to objective accomplishment.
