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By presenting a unified front, Cornerstone OnDemands Enterprise Suite should give large organizations a strategic view of a broad range of human resource development concerns, from training to succession planning.
Click here to read the full review of Cornerstone OnDemands Enterprise Suite.
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By presenting a unified front, Cornerstone OnDemands Enterprise Suite should give large organizations a strategic view of a broad range of human resource development concerns, from training to succession planning.
At its core, Cornerstone OnDemand Enterprise Suite is a learning management system that integrates the skills, performance and succession management tools necessary to help companies manage career development for their employees.
A hosted service, Enterprise Suite is priced at a very reasonable $24 to $48 per user per year, depending on the number of users and number of modules used. Considering that the application allows companies to treat employee development as an ongoing process, rather than as a once-a-year summary appraisal, Enterprise Suite provides considerable value.
The training component also makes the product more affordable than a typical build-it-yourself performance tracking system for large organizations.
Enterprise Suite supports integration with third-party HR management applications, as well as employee directories via an API.
Goal-oriented
eWEEK Labs tests show that Enterprise Suite provides a good tool set for helping companies define employee development in terms of both individual and organization goals. The full suite includes a learning management system that tracks both computer-based and instructor-led courses, as well as performance management and succession planning systems. There are 20,000 courses integrated into the Cornerstone OnDemand suite, although the courses will cost extra to use.
Companies can use—and pay for—only a subset of components within the full suite, but the best value will come when using all the suites components together.
During testing, we looked primarily at Enterprise Suites performance appraisal component, which was updated in December, and the succession planning module. (Cornerstone OnDemand makes quarterly updates to the suite; in March, the company updated the reporting and analytics component with new dashboards.)
As an integrated human capital management application, Enterprise Suite does a good job of tying together training and skill development with performance appraisals. For companies that invest heavily in training, particularly to meet regulatory requirements, the service makes it easy to align skill development with career development. We also could easily set goals without using the learning management system, and the system allows employees to set goals and perform self-assessments as part of the performance appraisal process.
Next Page: Robust set of options
TKTK
Many elements of the application, such as the appraisal process, are template-based, so companies have the ability to either adapt Enterprise Suite to an existing process or work from templates within the system. As an administrator, we could customize processes from the divisional level, so groups with different goals can use different methods to assess performance.
Enterprise Suite provides a robust set of options for defining employee appraisal methodologies. For example, we could weight assessments across direct and indirect managers, peers, and direct and indirect reports.
In our test appraisal process, we were able to establish goals and associated initiatives and thresholds that helped track employee development. Initiatives are tasks that fit in the realm of to-do items and can be tracked and managed using dates within the system; thresholds measure progress toward achieving a given goal. Initiatives fit in a broader goal hierarchy. This model allows managers to focus employees on specific tasks, either around training and testing or around gaining experience. Users can set both individual goals and goals that align with companywide initiatives.
Administration in Enterprise Suite is largely wizard-driven, as are most of the user interfaces. We found the system easy to use both as an administrator and a user, although some of the form-based wizards dont balance workloads well across steps.
Long live …
On the succession planning side, Enterprise Suite tracks information from the standpoint of individual career development, as well as requirements for a given role.
Companies have the ability to create employee profiles based on the criteria of their choosing. During tests, for example, we used a dozen criteria from a template that included current positions, accomplishments, skills, awards, licenses, experience, and previous roles and experiences.
We liked that the system allows users to quantify by date and qualify by level current and previous experience, giving companies a broader view of an employees experience when looking for likely internal candidates for an open position.
Companies can set up succession plans that allow managers to determine the necessary steps and time frame for an employee to develop skills necessary for a new role, as well as rate the relative risk of losing an employee. In addition, when no clear line of succession exists, Enterprise Suite can describe position skills to help HR managers conduct external searches.
Enterprise Suite has a good set of reporting and analytic tools to help companies assess training and manage employee appraisal usage.
The service includes a broad range of packaged reports for tracking employee training metrics and instructor performance, as well as for aggregating employee performance metrics and career and talent tracking reports. All these reports produce printable output, but we were disappointed that only a few of them could be exported to Microsoft Excel. However, companies can build custom reports that can be exported to Excel.
Next page: Evaluation Shortlist: Related Products.
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Employeases Employease Benefits and salary management system with some performance appraisal features (www. employease.com )
Vurv Technologys Recruitmax Resource Edition Employee skill management application (www.recruitmax.com)
Sabas Saba Enterprise 5 On-premise learning, performance and talent management application (www.saba.com)
Technical Analyst Michael Caton can be reached at [email protected].
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