PiiQ by Cornerstone vs. Development Dimensions International

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

When I got hired on at my company, we needed some quick wins and instant content to get some of the initiatives going. Having the facilitator and participant materials all ready to go (Training in a box) was extremely helpful. What would have taken me years to put together myself, I was able to put together in a few months. The materials are very user friendly.

Incentivized

• 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.

• I enjoyed the process of getting certified to teach topics from DDI. Our master instructor was excellent. He gave wonderful feedback and provided an environment where we could practice our skills and be ready to teach.
• The facilitator and participant materials are very professional and well laid out. They are easy to follow. Especially as a facilitator of the course. The facilitator guide provides very detailed content of what to say and how to teach the topic.
• I love the additional job aids, videos, surveys and reinforcement of training tools they provide for you to use with your learners. They also are provided in various formats (mobile, hard copy, etc.)

Incentivized

• 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

• Some of the courses are a bit out of date. They don't always stay up with the times of current trends in the business world.
• I would like to have the option of using the participant materials in a mobile format instead of having to call in and order hard copy participant materials for each course I teach.
• I would like to see more courses converted to Industrial format. I work for an Industrial type company and some of the courses are not relevant or do not hit home for our learners. They say they cannot relate to the case studies, videos, etc.

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

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

I like OpenSesame for the numerous options of topics you have to choose from. However, my DDI rep really helped me drill down the topics we needed to focus on. DDI simplified the process for me so it was not so confusing on where to start and what to use. We mapped out a plan together on how to support our employees and leaders in their development.

Incentivized

• 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

• We are a part of a dealer network. Before we rolled out the training and materials using DDI, we ranked 38 out of 52 dealers for our dealer loyalty score. We are now ranked #2.
• We are seeing our leaders confidence go up. They feel much more confident in how to lead their teams. The environment within the teams has improved. They are having more effective conversations with team members. 1x1s are happening in a more consistent basis.
• Our leaders have more tools than they have had before in how to lead and support their teams. Checklists, templates, surveys, etc.

Incentivized