Cornerstone Galaxy vs. Litmos vs. Trakstar Learn

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.

For us, Litmos does what we need it to do. It houses all of our training in one place and allows us to send it out to our entire staff quickly and easily. The only area we really struggle is with eSignatures. We use this feature for memos, but instead of using the actual eSignature, we use an assessment because it gives us the ability to lock it after one attempt so that someone doesn't log back in and show that it's no longer signed.

Incentivized

We use Mindflash for a lot of our internal training needs, and it is very versatile to accomplish your needs in training employees in a variety of different areas. I've never tried to use it for external needs, but I feel like the software at the advanced level wouldn't suit that need very well at all. At the Pro level, you get a lot more flexibility, but the cost is prohibitive for the size of our company.

Incentivized

• 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

• Content Authoring: Litmos has a good content authoring tool that provides options for designing engaging and interactive courses.
• Reporting: Litmos reporting tools and reporting engines are clear to understand, the come with useful features that allow for tracking completion, learning and engagement.
• Course Library: Litmos has an extensive course library that we can reorganize into learning pathways to accomplish set learning objectives for our team.
• Customer Support: We have seen Litmos Customer support improve over the time we have been customers. Not only are there helpful resources within the Litmos University, we also have access to skilled support from our Customer Success Manager and the Litmos Technical Team.

Incentivized

• Mindflash is very clean and user-friendly. Very easy for learners to navigate and understand.
• Mindflash’s reporting tool is unmatched. You can pull any type of report you could want or need.
• Customer service is top-notch. From our Sales Executive to our CSM, all the way up to the VP, our experience has been amazing.

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

• Litmos' email automation leaves a lot to be desired. When using SAML single sign on, a user can forward a reminder email to a colleague and it will include the link for _their_ training, if the recipient completes the training it report as being completed by the sender.
• Litmos' functionality around assessments is terrible. It is impossible to give partial or weighted credit for a question during marking. It's impossible to undo a mistake in marking or go back to the question. Hotspot questions are not worth using. Learners entering a test again after completing but before marking is done will erase their attempt's ability to be marked. There is more that is just unacceptable here. We make tests using microsoft forms because it's easier and more accessible.
• Many group admins are also learners, and will so infrequently use their admin portals, that they should not default to admin.
• We have imports from our HR platform to Litmos, which is convenient. Occasionally someone gets set up twice, which is a problem with the intergration or stuff that helpdesk does. However, merging two learner records should not be a huge hassle of enumerating all of the courses and manually marking them complete. There should be a way to do this in the software.
• Reporting in general leaves a great deal to be desired. There should be some more controls for xAPI/tincan modules that allow us to customize the level of tracking there. Articulate Rise uses a manifest that gives the LMS what it needs to integrate, why can't we see interaction data from the eLearning there like we could with LRS statements? If I make a storyline block or have a rise interaction, I should be able to see all the elements folks click and what they get hung up on.
• Litmos should support standard Training and L&D measurement frameworks. There's no reason we shouldn't at least be able to have a dashboard for a course that includes survey data, assessments, boosts, and maybe a manual place to put in business impact KPIs. Think kirkpatrick/Phillips ROI.

Incentivized

• Integration with Salesforce using professional level software. Mindflash's limited integration to only work with the higher level of Salesforce product.
• More brand customization for multiple product line trainings.
• Communication of trainers using Mindflash and sales team. We have multiple trainers sending invitations for training with no way for them to communicate with our sales team when a person has completed training.

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

For what we need in the very near future, Litmos does not offer us the required capability. Ideally, we are looking for an integrated LMS, coaching, mobile support and content creation platform. Litmos may have the LMS part covered but there are other platforms that do this better along with providing an integrated all-in-one service or at the very least support API integration with other vendors to meet our requirements.

Incentivized

The number of people using Mindflash is only going to rise and we need a system that remains easy to use for everyone involved. [update] This is especially vital now that we've lost head count in critical departments. Getting all of our training and Safety objectives met would be impossible without Mindflash.

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)

It's really easy to use. I just search the platform for my requirements, play a demo before downloading it, and then drag and drop it into my LMS. It couldn't be simpler. The only reason it isn't a 10 is that some courses don't have better summary descriptions or additional materials.

Incentivized

The interface is just so simple to understand. It's clean and efficient. We showed Mindflash off to the Safety group, who are not computer gurus and they were beyong excited to use it.

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.

It's never been an issue. It's always good to go

Incentivized

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

Never had any type of performance issues for Litmos

Incentivized

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

If I could give it a negative rating I would. Worst support from any program I have had. Everything is back and forth in the support ticket. The one time I tried to chat they could not support the question. Their support page is so full of sections and products I can never find anything I need, even with a customized home page. I was hopeful that once they left SAP support might improve but it has not. I don't even know who my account executive is. Nobody has ever reached out to me. I need someone to guide me through best practices for our company and there is nobody to do that.

Incentivized

Any problems or questions we have had with Mindflash have been handled promptly and effectively. I normally use the online chat option but have had to correspond with them through email and phone as well. We have never had an issue languish for weeks or months with Mindflash. They either fix the problem or let you know that the software isn't capable to handle the need at that point.

Incentivized

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.

It was a good overview of the platform, but of course it was more of a basic overview of how to use the platform. The team provided a good training, but I would of liked a better deep dive into some of the features.

Incentivized

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

Some of the best online training I've taken from any LMS platform. It was well put together and kept me engaged the entire time. It has a good amount of HR Compliance mixed with soft skills training that the team liked. Overall, it has a robust online suite of training that any company can use.

Incentivized

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

We have done two implementations. The first wasn't completed by me, but the second was. I had to do a lot of data migration across from the first system into the new instance. This was really time-consuming, and it would have been great to have had an option for someone else to have completed this for us. Learning about the tool has also been up to us, and whilst the content was good, it was also high level and broad, and then getting into the specifics of our setup was really just left to us to complete on our own and have a go. We got there, but probably could have been faster with some additional support from a consultant.

Incentivized

If you're going to develop a short course to demo the product internally, don't bother avoiding your own topics. Mindflash rolls whatever content you create during the trial into your production environment when you decide to buy. The time taken to go from not having a system to being live with Mindflash is virtually instant. What you'll be wanting for is time to develop content and people to test it out.

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

I made a choice of this tool because of great review message on internet about the advantage of litmos. Also as cost is concerned I saw it to be favourable to me more than other which are Abit expensive. Litmos also have intuitive user interface which made me to fall for it.

Incentivized

This is an alternate software that we have looked into, right now we don't have the need for the increased flexibility that Lesson.ly provides with learning from your mobile or tablet. We haven't seen a lot of those things as particularly useful for our current training methods, but we see the quality to be similar.

Incentivized

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

Pretty easy to scale this LMS and can be deployed companywide in all departments for us. The team's function allows you build separate teams that can easily be assigned specific courses, so it makes it much easier to deploy

Incentivized

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

• For one of our product lines, what used to require 8-10 onboarding calls now only needs two and we are aiming to get that down to just one or potentially none. Customers can learn on demand using the courses we have constructed for them and continue their learning live with trainers.
• By hosting all of our training in one place, we have made onboarding much more straightforward for employees — they can learn the product (same training we give customers) and also get their InfoSec and other training in one place.

Incentivized

• Mindflash has had a positive impact on our business because it allows us to train more new users with less effort, and ensure that trainees have access to the course materials for a period of time after they have started using our software to do their daily jobs. Review of the course materials allows them to get answers to common questions without having to submit requests to our support team, thereby reducing the administrative burden on our resources.

Incentivized