PiiQ by Cornerstone vs Totara LMS

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.

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Verified User

Professional in Human Resources

Staffing and Recruiting Company, 51-200 employees

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Pretty easy to use and loads plug-ins that can give you some useful functionality - also the fact that everyone who uses Totara LMS can create plug-ins as they come up with new ways of using the LMS makes it a dynamic environment. If you need a piece of functionality, ask around - someone may have developed it already as a plug-in, or you can work with your vendor to create it yourself. It's not expensive to add new plug-ins, although creating them costs a little more, it's well worth it for the end result — lots of support and user groups available to share ideas and learn from.
Easy to add your own courses, quizzes, and resources, and easy to add external courses using the integration options.
In my experience, you have to bring the reports into Excel to properly analyze the data, so they do need to do a bit more work on reporting.

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Andrea Lambell

Senior Advisor

MInistry of JusticeGovernment Administration, 1001-5000 employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

PiiQ by Cornerstone

Totara LMS

Course authoring

Course catalog or library

Player/Portal

Learning content

Mobile friendly

Progress tracking & certifications

Assignments

Compliance management

Learning administration

Learning reporting & analytics

Social learning

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.

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Gene Aldava, SPHR

Director, Human Resources and Administration

Abode CommunitiesReal Estate, 51-200 employees

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Easy user interface with good ability to brand to your own environment.
Relatively easy to administrate yourself.

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Andrea Lambell

Senior Advisor

MInistry of JusticeGovernment Administration, 1001-5000 employees

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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

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Verified User

C-Level Executive in Finance and Accounting

Marketing and Advertising Company, 11-50 employees

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Reporting can be a little inflexible - sometimes, the report cannot be customized to have all the columns you need as they are not available from that area of the LMS.
Graphic reporting needs some more work to be a bit more professional looking.

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Andrea Lambell

Senior Advisor

MInistry of JusticeGovernment Administration, 1001-5000 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

PiiQ by Cornerstone 3.0

Based on 2 answers

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.

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Verified User

Employee in Human Resources

Marketing and Advertising Company, 201-500 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Usability

PiiQ by Cornerstone 7.8

Based on 37 answers

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.

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Verified User

Employee in Human Resources

Construction Company, 201-500 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Reliability and Availability

PiiQ by Cornerstone 10.0

Based on 1 answer

So far 100%.

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Verified User

Vice-President in Human Resources

Telecommunications Company, 501-1000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Performance

PiiQ by Cornerstone 7.0

Based on 1 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.

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Verified User

Vice-President in Human Resources

Telecommunications Company, 501-1000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Support Rating

PiiQ by Cornerstone 8.1

Based on 36 answers

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.

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John Gwynn

Director, Human Resources

Viewpointe Archive Services L.L.C.Information Technology and Services, 51-200 employees

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Totara LMS 10.0

Based on 1 answer

Easy to access both local support and support/advice from other Totara LMS users as we keep in regular contact as a part of the totara government users group. Our vendor also keeps in touch with this group and a lot of knowledge is shared. It's easy to access the Totara LMS users academy, and one of my administrators has also set up a local forum where they ask each other questions and share knowledge as well. Our vendor is easy to access via our support plan and we have monthly catch-ups with our account manager where we hear about anything new coming up.

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Andrea Lambell

Senior Advisor

MInistry of JusticeGovernment Administration, 1001-5000 employees

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Online Training

PiiQ by Cornerstone 9.0

Based on 1 answer

We bought training provided by 3rd party – it was fabulous.

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Verified User

Vice-President in Human Resources

Telecommunications Company, 501-1000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Implementation Rating

PiiQ by Cornerstone 9.0

Based on 2 answers

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

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Verified User

Vice-President in Human Resources

Telecommunications Company, 501-1000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

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.

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Verified User

Administrator in Other

Food & Beverages Company, 51-200 employees

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No answers on this topic

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.

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Verified User

Executive in Manufacturing

Construction Company, 201-500 employees

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Compliance risk has noticeably decreased as we are now sitting at about 96% compliance.
Overall training spend markedly decreased as we can give people access to online alternatives

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Andrea Lambell

Senior Advisor

MInistry of JusticeGovernment Administration, 1001-5000 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

Optional

$1,000*

* per installation

PiiQ by Cornerstone Editions & Modules

Edition

PiiQ Performance	$8.00¹
PiiQ Learning + Content & Performance	$15.00¹
PiiQ Learning + Content	$8.00¹

per user per month

Additional Pricing Details

—

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Totara LMS Editions & Modules

—

Additional Pricing Details

—

Rating Summary

PiiQ by Cornerstone

Totara LMS

PiiQ by Cornerstone

Totara LMS

PiiQ by Cornerstone

Totara LMS

PiiQ by Cornerstone

Totara LMS

PiiQ by Cornerstone

Totara LMS

PiiQ by Cornerstone

Totara LMS

PiiQ by Cornerstone

Totara LMS

PiiQ by Cornerstone

Totara LMS

Likelihood to Recommend