Classroom Manager vs. PiiQ by Cornerstone

As we use Classroom Manager exclusively for internal purposes, I can only say something about this area. I would definitely recommend it, it's a great tool. Whenever we use it, we feel that people really thought about the way they have designed the software and the functions they have added. The main reason why we decided on this tool was because of its extensive functions. We currently only use like 10% of what it could do (subjective estimation), but we love that whatever learning challenge arises, the Classroom Manager can handle it.

Great for managing medium sized teams of people spread over geographically dispersed offices. Not so good for small teams (less than 15). Requires a degree of time and effort to set up correctly to provide useful data for management and a good experience for staff members, but once that effort has been made the results are great.

Incentivized

• The automatic generation of certificates after an employee has successfully completed their mandatory training.
• The software supports a variety of learning media (we work a lot with PDF and video).
• A great analytic & insight tool that helps us to understand more about the learning behavior of our employees

• Excellent customer service - when all else is equal, customer service will win the day.
• Ease of use helps us get everyone on board with the goals and ratings.
• The analytics are helpful to senior managers - we can compare how managers rate as well as how employees perform.

• The tool has a ton of functions, which makes the navigation in the backend sometimes a [little] tricky.
• Nothing to add :-)

• Being able to select more than one person when approving goals.
• Options to identify which people managers haven't approved goals, dine a review etc...rather then having to mimic each manager to see how they are going.
• 360 Feedback to stakeholders outside the business.
• Being able to remove a role that isn't being used in the organization anymore.

Incentivized

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.

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.

Incentivized

So far 100%.

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.

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.

Incentivized

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

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

The process of choosing an LMS took several months and involved many different people and wide rating criteria. What convinced us and made us choose Classroom Manager was the feeling we got every time we used the software or interacted with the company. They know exactly what they are doing, they were always there to support us and as already mentioned: when using the software and browsing through the functions, you just feel that this was created by experts that know their stuff.

We did review other systems when we purchased PiiQ but I don't know what these were due to the member of staff no longer being with the company, however, I do not that we chose PiiQ as it was simple to use and that it also had the Performance option available in addition to the learning platform. we knew that this was something we wanted to have in the future which is why we purchased it.

Incentivized

• It saves a significant amount of time and money to have everything in one central place.
• In our industry having skilled people with the right knowledge is a MUST to stay ahead of the competition. With the analytic & insight tool, we can track the learning process of our employees at a glance.
• One of the, if not THE most important point: Employee satisfaction. We have a dedicated area where we provide a wide range of free courses, covering a variety of topics. It started as a test to see if anyone is even interested but quickly became a fundamental part of our company branding strategy.

• Reviews are generally taking managers less time to prepare because the essential infrastructure is in place. Past reviews are easily retrievable for review if needed.
• HR administration of the system takes less time than the previous version of Cornerstone (CSOD). HR is still responsible for training new users, but the built-in user guide is more thorough and easier to use.
• We're starting to see - slowly but surely - more (and hopefully better) interaction between manager and employee.

Incentivized