Likelihood to Recommend Well suited for:
A busy environment where you want learners to be self-sufficient and to be able to access learning solutions at a time that suits them. For anyone who wants to access learning using different platforms such as iPad, mobile, PC, etc Anyone who needs a more in-depth learning solution rather than an overview of key learning points. Read full review Very good for learning and development and training of employees. For Applicant tracking, recuirement, onboarding, and enablement, I prefer
SAP SuccessFactors or Skillate. I also found that the SumTotal app is not very friendly on android and crashes sometimes and it is not optimized for mobile. Hence I end up never using it.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Assign complete learning plans to users so they don't have to spend time searching for courses. Export learner's transcripts so managers can easily see their employee's progress. Embed Social Media feeds that are relevant to their business. Read full review Cons 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 Read full review Reporting Mass importing of manual checks to be issued in California Ability to fund pay cards immediately Perform gross-up calculations within the payroll system automatically Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review I have transitioned from a position who supported the product to a position where I use the product. I continue to be impressed with the robustness of the product and how efficient it is. It is a user friendly software that can be used to navigate and accomplish tasks to meet organizational requirements.
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review I do not find SumTotal to be intuitive. I feel we need to adjust our needs to meet the functionality available in the tool.
Read full review Reliability and Availability So far 100%.
Read full review Performance 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.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review We have our own IT support to assist in SumTotal issues, however, we have had to log in cases directly. Support is mediocre at best.
Read full review Online Training We bought training provided by 3rd party – it was fabulous.
Read full review Implementation Rating 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
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review When I came to my company, they had been using a "light" LMS called Articulate. It was cheap and bare bones; i.e. not a lot of features, really just a platform to launch eLearning from and not real interface for student to utilize. When I began to overhaul the training department, this was one of the first things I changed. Articulate would only run courses built in their software, and the software was not 508 compliant. In addition, we had no ability to create learning plans, house transcripts, customize the interface, or manage the students. I made the choice to select and LMS that was a true LMS with all of the features that were critical to our clients' needs. Thus far, SumTotal has been able to support all of our needs, except one; mobile learning that is media rich
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review Clean front-end user interface for easier course catalog management. Reporting has been more difficult than previous LMS. Audience building has more variables making it more difficult to manage. Slower overall client turnaround due to admin side interface. Read full review ScreenShots PiiQ by Cornerstone Screenshots SumTotal Talent Development Screenshots