Axonify vs. PiiQ by Cornerstone

Well-suited to the original purpose of delivering questions on a daily basis; everything beyond that gets complicated. For example, there are a number of program types available to deliver information (certifications, daily reinforcement, self-directed learning, assigned paths, etc.). However understanding how they all fit together requires advancing weaving together of multiple types of programs for individual groups, and requires more time than you would expect. Nearly 3 years into working with Axonify, we are still trying to iron it all out. We also have side groups of customers who meet to help each other because we all struggle with it too. We have a hard time helping our leaders and subject matter experts understand what is possible and what doesn't work well in the platform, since it is so different and doesn't work as expected. For example, communication to teams is one way - the recipients can't respond.

Incentivized

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

• It facilitates a rapid change in business culture.
• It forces the L& D team to get closer to the business and truly unpack what underpins the business challenges and requirements.
• It makes learning smarter, more efficient, meaningful, and impactful.
• The speed to market of learning is significantly enhanced.
• It motivates, inspires, and encourages staff to learn.

• 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.

• Subjects and categories organization system can get a little confusing.
• While there is support for mobile phones, there's not an easy way to test it on mobile devices without deploying it first.
• Lots of options so it can get complex if you just need a straightforward solution.

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

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.

Axonify is extremely easy to use, for both employees and managers. The platform is visually appealing, and Axonify offers a number of videos and tutorials for any administration and user functionality. The reporting is also very easy to obtain and review, with the ability to drill down to team and individual results.

Incentivized

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.

Axonify has been great for support. We have a dedicated rep but I have also just posted to the official user boards and gotten feedback as well. Axonify also has a conference every year that is a great way to learn. You can also become certified in Content or Administration with Axonify if you so choose.

Incentivized

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

There are so many training platforms and increasing numbers of non LMS training platforms that it can be very difficult to figure out what is best for you. It's been a while since I did all the research that led me to Axonify, but below is a short summary of the pros and cons of the platforms I looked at and how I decided to implement Axonify.

• Compligo- This platform was recommended by the Director of Legal and Regulatory when I first joined my current company. Its main feature is that they provide training on legal and regulatory topics (this is very important to my organization) however, it is a very old school platform, the training tended to be very long, and there was no element of reinforcement. It felt more like "check the box" training than education our workforce, so I opted to continue looking
• Docebo- This was my second choice. Docebo is extremely similar to Axonify in the learning philosophy but ultimately I chose Axonify. I won't give my exact reasoning because I'm sure both platforms have made considerable updates since I did my research and I don't want to cause confusion by posting out of date information
• Inkling- Inkling is a very cool platform, but not quite as robust as I knew I would need, although I'm sure they have added functionality since I last tested the platform

now I am out of space, so I'll leave it at that.

Incentivized

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

• Before, we could not accurately measure if people were really reviewing our monthly safety material or really reading our new policy releases. Now we have nearly 100% compliance.
• Over the past two years since we implemented Axonify, we have seen a decrease of $200,000 in our workers comp annual cost. We expect this trend to continue or stay stable due to a staff that is more aware of safety.
• We maintain our position as a San Francisco and Silicon Valley Best Place to Work due to our high morale and employee engagement level. 99% of our employees engage with Axonify an average of 13x per month. This ranking has made us an leader in affordable housing with some of the best staff members in our industry.

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