PiiQ by Cornerstone vs. PerformancePro

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

Useful in a wide range of performance management-based situations. Allows options like supervisor and peer feedback, as well as messaging and addition of notes to profiles and appraisals. Allows for uploading of external documents as well as creation PerformancePro-specific documents. We have used the system for both bi-annual and annual appraisals, and both cycles worked well. If your organization keeps performance-based records in another system or file structure, you might not utilize many of the options PerformancePro has, which could lead to it feeling underutilized.

• 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.

• Customization - allows employers to edit language throughout the review process to reflect company terminology.
• Automation - automatic emails and reminders for every step of the appraisal process. Saves time by reducing human follow-up at various points.

• 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

• Interface - user interface could be updated to a more modern feel. Home screen (with widgets) feels somewhat cramped and widget displays could be more fully optimized.
• Admin functions - Robust options, but the display of company edit pages is somewhat busy, and functions are sometimes buried under multiple pages of access.

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

In both chat and phone support, representatives have always been helpful and ready to offer assistance with any question or concern. Over the course of five years, there have been a few occasions when follow-up was assured but did not happen (or did not happen in a timely manner.) But much more frequently, support has been quick to follow-up and provide information as promised.

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

• 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

• Saves time by integrating multiple performance development aspects into one system.
• Easy to customize to fully align with company strategies, resulting in a clear and consistent message when providing feedback and appraisals.