So take a look at key takeaways from the event:
Progress Report - Cornerstone Convergence - HR Core debut, lot's of product, time to execute from Holger Mueller
Want to read on?
Here you go: Always tough to pick the takeaways – but here are my Top takeaways:
Cornerstone moves beyond Talent Management – With the announcement of Link, the HR core function Cornerstone shied away to call Core HR product, the vendor is moving beyond Talent Management. Gone are the days that the position was ‘the world does not need another HR Core system’ – but Cornerstone gave good reasons why an HR Core offering makes sense now. Apart from competing with the Big 3 more effectively, Cornerstone has found three valuable scenarios on how it helps its customers with its Link offering. Now it is just announcement days, and Cornerstone will have to move away from a Learning centric story to a platform (with Edge) or HR Core story. I jokingly asked if it will be 3 or 5 years till Cornerstone offers Payroll… and the answer was (of course) ‘Never!’ – but if there is one thing we learn here – never say never in enterprise software.
Cornerstone Insights takes off – A good 18 months after Cornerstone acquired Evolv, more products in the ‘true’ analytics space (those who take an action or make a recommendation) are becoming real. We saw best candidate fit and best promotion fit as part of the keynote. It looks like Cornerstone is relying mostly on proven scoring algorithms, which come along with the bonus that they can easily be explained to business users. But it is good to see Cornerstone is using the Evolv expertise, bringing this ‘acquihire’ to fruition. For my taste the solution is still risking to be more about visualization than ‘true’ analytics – but the scores are shown and can be used right away. Not its key Cornerstone does not repeat the mistake of some other early ‘true’ analytics pioneers in the HCM space, and does not sell to the HCM leaders (generalization here, of course), and avoids arduous and lengthy proof of concepts – but provides value to the line of business users. Humans are very good at figuring out if analytics work – or not.
Tons of more product – I jokingly told Cornerstone executives that this Convergence had more product announcements and available than the least three conferences together, and they jokingly agreed, some truth to it. So Cornerstone also announced / made available:
A new User Interface – Last year the collected influences scolded Cornerstone on a more dated UI. It is good to see the vendor has listened, has hired is first usability experts (and then quickly more). The result is a much improved usability of the Cornerstone products something customers noted positively. We ran out of time to lift the lid on the approach – so the verdict is still open if this was a ‘lipstick on the famous p…’ or a fundamental overall overhaul. But no matter what the result looks much better putting the Cornerstone UI in the main pack of HCM products out there. Not a bad step ahead in 12 months.
On the concern side the operational challenges only get bigger for Cornerstone. While it needs to compete with the Big 3 and becomes more effective with Link when the conversation gets expanded to HR Core, it needs to fund and deliver on the R&D and overall know how acquisition. So a roadmap of Link (and other products) will be good to share soon, as customers and prospects need to know where to invest – and where not. With roadmaps available even publicly by some competitors, Cornerstone will have to double down on the same and related efforts. But there is always room for hard charging and hardworking vendors in enterprise software, and Cornerstone is certainly one of them.
And most importantly the vendor has shown to listen to market, customers and influencers, has upgraded usability and painted a compelling vision going forward. So a very good Convergence for Cornerstone and its customers and ecosystem… now its execution time. We will be watching and analyzing - as you know.
Cornerstone moves beyond Talent Management – With the announcement of Link, the HR core function Cornerstone shied away to call Core HR product, the vendor is moving beyond Talent Management. Gone are the days that the position was ‘the world does not need another HR Core system’ – but Cornerstone gave good reasons why an HR Core offering makes sense now. Apart from competing with the Big 3 more effectively, Cornerstone has found three valuable scenarios on how it helps its customers with its Link offering. Now it is just announcement days, and Cornerstone will have to move away from a Learning centric story to a platform (with Edge) or HR Core story. I jokingly asked if it will be 3 or 5 years till Cornerstone offers Payroll… and the answer was (of course) ‘Never!’ – but if there is one thing we learn here – never say never in enterprise software.
Cornerstone Insights takes off – A good 18 months after Cornerstone acquired Evolv, more products in the ‘true’ analytics space (those who take an action or make a recommendation) are becoming real. We saw best candidate fit and best promotion fit as part of the keynote. It looks like Cornerstone is relying mostly on proven scoring algorithms, which come along with the bonus that they can easily be explained to business users. But it is good to see Cornerstone is using the Evolv expertise, bringing this ‘acquihire’ to fruition. For my taste the solution is still risking to be more about visualization than ‘true’ analytics – but the scores are shown and can be used right away. Not its key Cornerstone does not repeat the mistake of some other early ‘true’ analytics pioneers in the HCM space, and does not sell to the HCM leaders (generalization here, of course), and avoids arduous and lengthy proof of concepts – but provides value to the line of business users. Humans are very good at figuring out if analytics work – or not.
Tons of more product – I jokingly told Cornerstone executives that this Convergence had more product announcements and available than the least three conferences together, and they jokingly agreed, some truth to it. So Cornerstone also announced / made available:
- Cornerstone View – A ‘tablet first’ version of showing the above Cornerstone Insights in action. Easy to use, information at the finger tips for business users, a good V1 for an important day to day product for business users.
- Cornerstone Workforce Planning – Cornerstone offered also a view at the first version of its Workforce Planning product, which used to be high as a mindset of many HR professionals 12-18 months ago. It is good to see the vendor having delivered a solid V1, as with all enterprise planning products, this one also stands and falls with its ability to unseat the tool of choice, Microsoft’s Excel. Too early to tell but off to a good start.
- Edge Integrate – A year ago Cornerstone announced its ‘paas’ (by purpose with the little ‘p’ as it is not a general purpose PaaS a la e.g. Pivotal CloudFoundry, but a development tool to create, extend and integrate HCM apps), now it delivered the vital integration option. No chance to drill down more into it, stay tuned for more later in the year.
- Launch of CyberU – As usually Cornerstone Miller was candid – and going back to the roots, which were free software and pay for content – under the same name today – Cornerstone announced CyberU – available at cyberu.com. A website to source Learning content from MooCs and create / crowdsource content as well.
A new User Interface – Last year the collected influences scolded Cornerstone on a more dated UI. It is good to see the vendor has listened, has hired is first usability experts (and then quickly more). The result is a much improved usability of the Cornerstone products something customers noted positively. We ran out of time to lift the lid on the approach – so the verdict is still open if this was a ‘lipstick on the famous p…’ or a fundamental overall overhaul. But no matter what the result looks much better putting the Cornerstone UI in the main pack of HCM products out there. Not a bad step ahead in 12 months.
MyPOV
Cornerstone is doing well on all fronts. The vendor has a shot at breaking even for the first time in 2016 based on GAAP rules and is expanding its product offering, boldly, more bold than I would have expected. This could be the strategic junction where it is clear that Cornerstone has left the ‘Talent Management only’ offering, and is moving to cover much more HCM automation (for now with Link in HR Core and with Workforce Planning gets into Workforce Management). It’s also good to see that Cornerstone is doing some good housekeeping on the technology and platform side, as other vendors are, too – but we did not hear that much from Cornerstone before, so things are definitively moving ‘behind the scenes’, too. All of these means that Cornerstone moves from a very key Talent Management vendor to an overall HCM player, and CHROs and CIOs needs to re-adjust their bearings in the market place.On the concern side the operational challenges only get bigger for Cornerstone. While it needs to compete with the Big 3 and becomes more effective with Link when the conversation gets expanded to HR Core, it needs to fund and deliver on the R&D and overall know how acquisition. So a roadmap of Link (and other products) will be good to share soon, as customers and prospects need to know where to invest – and where not. With roadmaps available even publicly by some competitors, Cornerstone will have to double down on the same and related efforts. But there is always room for hard charging and hardworking vendors in enterprise software, and Cornerstone is certainly one of them.
And most importantly the vendor has shown to listen to market, customers and influencers, has upgraded usability and painted a compelling vision going forward. So a very good Convergence for Cornerstone and its customers and ecosystem… now its execution time. We will be watching and analyzing - as you know.
Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (and my analyst meeting tweets are here).
Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.
More on Cornerstone
Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.
More on Cornerstone
- Progress Report - Cornerstone innovates with Analytics, PaaS and Learning, but needs to watch the basics - read here
- News Analysis - Cornerstone On Demand announces CornerstoneEdge, the 1st PaaS Solution for the Talent Management Industry - read here
- Progress Report - Cornerstone completest Talent Management - what is next - read here
- Event Report - Cornerstone re-imagines Talent Mangament - and itself - read here
More HCM Musings blog posts
- Musings - The Bots are coming to your conversation - what are the implications? Read here
- Musings - We are entering the age of the Über Super Computer - read here
- Musings - Retail is the breeding ground for NextGen Apps - read here
- Musings – Time to re-invent email – for real! Read here
- The Dilemma with Cloud Infrastructure updates - read here
- Are we witnessing the Rise of the Enterprise Cloud? Read here
- What are true Analytics - a Manifesto. Read here
- Is TransBoarding the Future of Talent Management? Read here
- How Technology Innovation fuels Recruiting and disrupts the Laggards - read here
- Musings - What is the future of Recruiting? Read here
- Why all the attention to Recruiting? Read here