Cornerstone Galaxy vs. KeldairHR

Cornerstone Galaxy is a good solution for larger companies that focus on training and want to offer a variety of options to their employees and departments. It is highly customizable. It does require a tech savvy team to set-up, and maintain. This is not a set-it-and-forget-it system. From an LMS perspective, it wouldn't be my top choice for employees who only need a mobile-friendly approach.

It is great at getting applicants to apply. The one down side is that a majority of our applicants are applying from a mobile device so they are unable to complete the entire application process. When you send them a link to complete the rest of the application from a desktop computer, many do not have access to this. Because of this, they do not answer some of the "weed out" questions that give us insight as to what type of employee they would be.

• Ability to provide multiple customizable access roles from general end user to full system admin and anything in between
• Powerful reporting system in the LMS to track a plethora of data points within the platform (user data, training information, transcript information)
• Great options to customize the look and feel of your "home page" to best meet your company's needs and goals.
• Ability to customize the transcript view for learners (i.e. when Completed training will move to their Archived transcript, what to do with Inactive training on transcripts)

Incentivized

• Automatic position posting has increased our exposure drastically as an employer. We have increased our applicant flow by over 100%.
• Hyrell's applicant communication features have allowed us to stay engaged with candidates during every step of the hiring process. It makes for a very professional first impression.
• I love that Hyrell is user-friendly. The system is incredibly easy to use. We have a high number of users throughout nine locations with varying skill levels utilizing technical applications. All of our users seemed to catch on very quickly.

Incentivized

• Sometimes finding the right answer to your support question can be a bit more difficult than it should be.
• I would like to see more OSHA related courses.
• At times, the administrative interface seems to need to be updated, but the tradeoff honestly might be the absolute rock-solid stability of the platform.

Incentivized

• The main issue I have with the system is that in order for a template update to take effect, it has to be re-posted (at least that's the process as I understand it.) For example, I have updated one of our existing job templates to include a new hard skill question. The template is posted in over 50 locations and in order for this update to go into effect, I have to manually re-post these positions which can be very time consuming. If there was a way to automatically update a posting with template changes it would be a huge help to our business.

As long as pricing stays reasonable, we will likely stay with Cornerstone for at least one more contract renewal. It would be a large task to migrate all of our content to a new system. However, the LMS landscape is diversifying with new startups that are showing some real innovation.

Incentivized

No Issues, and again, the Hyrell folks have lived up to what they said they would do at the beginning!

Easy to use, easy to learn, lots of support during the learning process. There are a few parts of the system we don't use and I'm hesitant to begin using because other clients have said they're difficult and cumbersome (certifications) or outdated (libraries)

Meets all expectations for application processing. Does a great job of pushing the job ad out to multiple online job boards. Provides good email alerts. Relatively easy to use even for my supervisors who are only in the system on occasion.

I haven't really had any major availability problems. The service is practically impeccable but it is true that at times, due to server and latency problems, the application has been slower. But these have been specific issues that have resolved themselves.

I have never had an issue.

I haven't seen many issues at all with load times. Sometimes learning assignments will take longer then expected but it is still reasonable. They have taken great effort over the last couple years to speed things up like reports and search results so I expect that effort to continue in the coming year.

Incentivized

Meets our expectations.

Its always important to have support when you are facing problems and when you are the main admin of the organization. Cornerstone Support is very supporting when you have not found the answer in the help guide. its very useful to have a team support to guide you.

Incentivized

I have never had to wait for response. Someone always speaks directly to me, sometimes more than once, and email follow-up keeps the issue in the field of vision until there is a resolution.

we use also to admin all our training in person events and sessions. Its easy to admin this kind of trainings and automatize some processes we have. Also de user experience and the integration with other systems helps to the employees to use more. All modules integrated oriented to develop people is the principal reason to have CSOD. The training administration is very complete and allows to automate many processes.

Emily is great at explaining!

The online modules are pretty good. You can access them at any time, which we have done. You learn a lot in the beginning, but having the ability to retake short lessons when you are working on those items was very helpful.

Incentivized

It worked well!

The implementation was pretty difficult. We felt they (Cornerstone) didn’t properly allocate the resources to complete our implementation in the timetable we wanted.

For example, we worked on Workday and SSO integrations - work that we had specifically contracted for in advance. When we were ready to work on that project, they didn’t have the people ready to help us, so it took a lot longer than necessary. That was my biggest pain point.

The implementation approach we went with was a self-led implementation. We would speak to the implementation manager once per week, and self-trained. We met with implementation manager to discuss issues, review things that we’d learned for 1 hour. We found that wasn’t enough. Other things would come up outside that one hour window that we couldn’t get answers to. We didn’t have anyone to ask about those things and we had to wait to ask during our weekly meeting.

The advantage of the self-led implementation approach was that it was really inexpensive – significantly less than the implementation cost for the other systems that we looked at. I also liked that we could pace ourselves. There were however big roadblocks. We would have to make sure the right resources were available. We had an implementation/project manager with a lot of experience and felt that the person was knowledgeable but missed on a few things.

In hindsight, I would still go with the self-led implementation, but knowing what I know now, I would ask for the integration person to be available more. I would work that into the contract. With single sign-on, we needed deep linking to build direct links through a Single Sign-On tool, e.g. when someone gets an email, it directs them to training. But it has to go through SSO to get them to the correct link. Deep linking wasn’t turned on in our system and they had to activate it. We encountered little things like that – sequencing pre-requisites which were problematic. We tried to troubleshoot ourselves.

I recommend you consider contracting for some extra implementation hours and determine when they are going to be available. Work it into the contract that you have the ability to call tech support during implementation. In addition to weekly implementation meetings, they have technical webexes – 4 every week, but 2 didn’t apply to us – one as we were using SSO. The challenge is they were not always relevant – we had specific questions that didn’t fall into those categories

Ask for the help you need from your account representative and technical support. They are very helpful and easy to work with.

The user experience is a lot better than using SumTotal as an admin CSOD makes working easy. Without having workarounds. Reporting is a lot better than both platforms. Reporting in CSOD is complex however easy to manage and create when you understand the data points collected

Incentivized

Hyrell came up against ClearFit and ZipRecruiter. ClearFit looked very strong, but ultimately its pay per posting model didn't provide enough cost certainty. ZipRecruiter seems to be a strong player too. There was a lot of flash with ZipRecruiter but the product didn't seem as complete where it mattered for my client. Hyrell was a good balance on feature set and provided good value. The client needed something that was easy to use so they could get up and running quickly. The Hyrell trial went well and the ramp up was very quick and easy. Hyrell's subscript plans fit my clients needs starting with the Solo plan (3 active jobs) and then quickly moving up to the Small Business plan (9 active jobs) after a few months once additional hiring managers came on-board.

It is important to be familiar with the terms and annual increases in licenses and other aspects of the contract. I recommend analyzing this from the beginning and the permanence is relevant because Cornerstone updates its modules and brings out new features that may allow you to leave a module to acquire another

It's a great product with some pieces that are set but many things that can be customized as needed for individual needs

Incentivized

Hyrell has kept us moving, tracking and hiring strong candidates, even has we have moved from hiring 1 or 2 people a month to 3 or 4 a week! Great program, good features and fantastic supportl (Thanks, Emily!!!)

As I have said before, I have no doubt that the services of the Cornerstone sales people were very good. In particular, our salesperson spent a lot of time in contact with us to make the process go smoothly. Perhaps being a large company in some cases the times were slowed down but it is something normal to take into account.

• We are in the process of trying to increase employee engagement through content expansion. We are in the early stages of this.
• The Edge Import Tool, in conjunction with Reporting 2.0, has done a great job of helping to automate/semi-automate tasks for huge time savings.
• Maintaining compliance. Achieved through dynamic/automated groups, assignments, communication, and reporting.

Incentivized

• Better Qualified Applicants: The selection tools through Hyrell help us to attract the quality applicants we seek.
• Greater Applicant Traffic: By utilizing all of the major job boards, we see a higher number of applicants.
• Retention: Because of improved quality, we tend to retain more employees. This is a HUGE benefit to our Company!