Cornerstone OnDemand is a cloud-based application for talent management. Cornerstone offers suites for recruiting, training, performance monitoring and planning, learning, and HR data management. It is scaled for enterprises.
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LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com)
Score 8.2 out of 10
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Lynda.com (now offered as part of LinkedIn Learning) is an elearning course library acquired and now supported by LinkedIn in May 2015.
Cornerstone OnDemand has much more capability compared to Destiny One. It allowed us to expand our LMS capabilities. Percipio and LinkedIn Learning provide a good base of online trainings but CSOD is still more robust.
Overall, Cornerstone stacked up pretty evenly with SuccessFactors. The final kicker with why we went with Cornerstone was because they were a little bit of a smaller company. Since they were a little bit smaller, that allows us as admins to have a little bit more of an input on …
The product continually improves based on their client feedback. I would love to work in more of Cornerstone platforms but we only use the Learning platform.
I feel Cornerstone OnDemand is a great solution for companies that have a large amount of compliance training that needs to be assigned and closely tracked. The features of dynamic groups (based on specific user criteria) allows you to target very specific audiences. The assignment functionality gives you great flexibility on when the assignment runs and how often, and also provides many options for due dates (static date or dynamic date - x days from hire date, date assigned, etc.). This has allowed us to have a clear and consistent user experience for both our newly hired employees and our seasoned employees.
I've learned hundreds of software applications over the last several decades, and trained teams in offices and one-on-one. At one point, books and trade magazines were a great way to get up to speed with an application, but they've become less and less effective for getting started. Video lessons have some strengths; you can get a rapid overview of a program's capabilities and watch an experienced user using its tools efficiently. On rare occasions they'll even point out bugs that could trip you up, but I wish instructors shared more of those issues. However, it takes a very self-motivated learner to sit through training sessions. Most people don't fit that category, and a subscription may end up gathering dust like a pandemic gym membership. My account is sometimes dormant for months, but then I'll be watching lessons continually the following month. I've often wondered if it was worth it for that reason. I have some friends that voraciously devoured class after Lynda.com class, and built successful careers on that training. But many others never use their account. It's helpful to consider whether you're a self-motivated learner. If not, it may not be the best format for you. More complicated software often can't be adequately introduced in a several-hour-long series of videos. I found Final Cut Pro (7) hard to learn online, also Logic Pro. Other somewhat complicated programs like DVD Pro were a snap to learn, and I learned a lot about PHP and Actionscript programming from Lynda.com. Some web and graphics software is exceptionally explained by real experts, such as Lynda's Photoshop classes, which are the best I've seen on that subject. Many of her web production courses will take you every step along the way to creating your own website, even if you haven't coded before. Adobe and Apple have both published similar project-based tutorial classes in book form, and I think they're a bit more polished, but the video instructor can help move you along through all the content more easily. Learning software seems to work better from an online video than a book these days; it's helpful to already be sitting at the computer where you're able to try everything out as it's explained. Most people don't seem to retain software principles unless they're trying them while learning. A bad instructor can make it difficult to sit through a video class. Lynda.com and others generally have a large variety of content creators, so you're not as limited with instructors as you might be at a University, where the same instructor may teach several related applications. Departmental faculty may have much more targeted and creative applications for your software though, while paid corporate software training can be mind-numbingly bad. Continuing ed classes that I've taken usually seemed to just focus on learning the tools in a software product. They often don't or even can't show you how to apply the software for your purposes as full time faculty at a University might. Some Lynda.com instructors weren't great, but most seemed a cut above the continuing ed and corporate software trainers I've learned from or contracted. The majority of the classes seemed to apply the software for an impressive final project. Redundancy is a real drawback among the online lessons. Often the advanced classes repeat many of the concepts from the introductory "Essentials" courses. If you know an earlier version of an application and just want to learn new features, a book may be a faster route to your goal. I originally suggested the "New Features" lessons that Lynda began to offer for updated releases, and I think they're especially helpful. It's much harder to skim through a video than a page of text, so I'd anticipate having to complement your Lynda.com lessons with other instructional materials. Lynda.com didn't have as many of the "fluff" courses that LinkedIn is now offering. These titles read like articles from Cosmo. They might be better served to offer "How to respond to a connection request from a recruiter who works in a field completely unrelated to you."
Automatic recurring assignments are easy to get that refresher training out without needing to assign it fresh each time.
Reporting 2.0 makes it easy to write and share your reports with just selected filters. Making it easy for people receiving it to just change what they need to see.
Learning Admin Console makes it easy to peek at what is going on in your portal and open up connected reporting when needed.
Success Center is a great resource for getting peer answers to questions and learning about the releases and suggesting changes that should be added to the roadmap.
Industry expert authors/instructors - you're learning from people with pedigree.
Breadth and depth of catalog - not only is there a wide range of topics and disciplines, but there are frequently several levels of depth within each (eg. Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced).
Time needed to complete each course AND each section of a course are included - you know what you're getting into from the first click.
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.
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.
It can help all employees learn to strengthen current skills or to learn new skills and then can learn to excel in their current department or they learn a new skills in a new department creating interconnection and cross-departmental value in a company.
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)
Very user friendly, easy to copy and/or download notes offline, and follow up with your instructor is easy as pie. You can even LinkedIn with your instructor and follow up with questions/concerns online and in several forums. Very cool concept and easy to use.
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.
Pages do not load quickly. Often times any action or selection of a box, drop down, check, pretty much ANY Javascript interaction causes the whole entire page to load/reload/start doing something in the background. This makes a nightmare for having to mass edit courses or upload ILT sessions. It's the one of the archaic web designs they use that really bugs me as an admin and makes working in the portal at times intolerable and insufferable
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.
The technical team behind LinkedIn Learning (or Lynda.com) knows their job, and they usually solve problems very quickly. While I haven't had many run-ins with them (thus the low rating), I do find that when we call them, the problem gets resolved in a reasonable amount of time. The flip-side of this comment is that we never have needed to call them with a high-priority issue.
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.
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.
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
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
Our organization has used different webinars, including ones on LinkedIn, to provide similar insight. But it's a totally different ballgame. Lynda.com offers in-depth tutorials rather than just a 2-hour video broadcast. With lynda.com there are more information and experts, as well as so many different courses fit for every need/want. There is also a lot more flexibility with lynda. You can take it on the go, watch on mobile and at anytime, rather than being tied to a certain time slot.
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
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.
I can't think of a negative impact that Lynda.com has when it relates to the extensive library of training software that is available to subscribers. I'm lucky that my job provides a free subscription for instructors. I use Lynda.com to hone in on my technical skills.
