Cornerstone Performance vs Actus

Cornerstone is the best and most comprehensive solution that I have seen for talent management. I have used the LMS, Performance, Succession, Connect and Extended Enterprise modules. CSOD continues to make enhancements to their product, especially with Learning, Connect and Performance, but where they are lacking is in enhancements to their mobile app and to their Succession module. While I do find great value in reaching out to their Global Product Support team, it will sometimes take days and even weeks before you get a response from them on a case. The communication to the customer is lacking there. Additionally, I find that some of the modules, such as Performance and Succession, can be really complex and require a lot of testing and trial and error to get things right. It does help that you are given two test environments (Stage and Pilot) to test things in. The quarterly releases have also gotten better over time, with many resources that can be used throughout User Acceptance Testing and the rest of the release cycle. Change is not always handled seamlessly for the customer, as we have experienced major delays when our Account Manager was on leave and also our Client Success Manager was out on leave. The people who filled in for them seemed overwhelmed and as a result there was a lack of communication. The 360 Degree performance review functionality can be great if you make the initial time investment to set it up. The one thing that Cornerstone does not provide with their 360 functionality is benchmarking with other companies, which our HR decided they wanted to do and therefore went with a different vendor for 360 reviews. Overall, Cornerstone is a great encompassing talent management system and I have not encountered another company that comes close to what they offer.

- Heather R.

Our experience with Cornerstone has been rough to say the least. From our initial sales meetings and implementation there have been things that have just not gone as promoted. As a regulated medical device manufacturing company we have very specific expectations out of our LMS and Cornerstone claimed to be able to support those expectations and has fallen short in some areas. That being said, they have improved over the years and are much better with being transparent with us then in the past. We struggle with using a cloud based LMS for two reasons. One because our requested enhancements are usually denied or go into the black hole of a system that uses votes from other clients to assess other clients interests. As I mentioned we have very specific needs which aren't likely to receive a large number of votes. And second, when changes are pushed to our portal automatically we then have to retrain our global admins and users. It sometimes feels like you have to ask the same questions over and over to receive help. On the pro side I'd say the user interface is a big pro. The users seem to like the look and feel of cornerstone much better than our previous LMS. If we had to do it all over again would we cornerstone in the first place, maybe not, but as I mentioned previously there has been some improvement over the years and we will continue to voice our requests until it exceeds our requirements.

- Casey C.

I have configured Cornerstone for 2 years in my organisation and in these 2 years, our Performance Management strategy has continued to change every 6 months. The system has been sufficiently flexible to support the majority of these changes. Furthermore, the last few releases have seen a brilliant user interface redesign which our end-users have responded well to. You can have an amazing product that delivers from a functional standpoint, but if end users experience terrible UI and UX design in the system, then you are better off going back to pen and paper performance reviews. Thankfully, Cornerstone woke up and the last few releases saw a welcome improvement to UI and UX. Simple, clean and modern. Something to be wary of is the quarterly releases. I have seen great functionality released but have also experienced issues with the new functionality and existing functionality during regression testing, that seems to be the result of bad QA prior to deployment. This has previously caused great frustration for us. That being said, whenever the issue is escalated to our Client Success Manager, it would receive the appropriate attention by the engineers until its resolution.

- Nelson K.

We have found the service and support from the Actus Team to be exceptional. I am a techie so they have also provided lots of guidance around people stuff and culture which has been helpful.

- Lukasz T.

We have recommended this product... The focus on performance management is higher within the organisation than it was. This helps people make clearer links to business objectives and focuses their performance against personal targets. It has ensured that people have clear records where performance is good or where there are issues to be addressed and having the system in place has helped embed a more regular 1:1 process.

- Megan H.

Our experience with Actus has been outstanding. From initial contact and tender process through to implementation and launch of the system I cannot fault the service we received. We had a very short schedule for build and launch to meet our internal deadlines but the whole team at Actus worked hard to ensure that we were able to achieve this. Every member of the team we have dealt with has been extremely helpful and patient with all requests we have made. I would highly recommend Actus to any organisation looking to implement a Performance Management system.

- Rebecca L.