Follow the “Leader”

CORNERSTONE RECEIVES TOP GRADES IN GARTNER, IDC & FORRESTER STUDIES

Flagship industry analyst reports published by leading firms Gartner, IDC and Forrester Research in the first half of 2011 have identified Cornerstone OnDemand as a market “leader” among talent management vendors.  Moreover, Cornerstone is presented as the only pure-play Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendor to compete in both the learning management and performance management categories.  Other companies may be rushing to fill out their functional offerings and make the switch to SaaS, but Cornerstone has been there from the beginning.

Independent Analysis for a Crowded, Shifting Marketplace

The talent management marketplace is a crowded one despite waves of merger and acquisition activity over the last 12 months. It’s also a fast-growing market with lots of potential.  Just look at the events of the past few months to get a sense of the validation by the market itself for the Software-as-a-Service model and integrated talent management software.

To make sense of it all, vendor analyses by the major industry research firms are offered in many forms – quadrants, waves, scapes, and scopes.  In the end, there may be no single perfect research model or any one report that will solve all your procurement challenges. But taking all of these analyst reports together, you can certainly make out some patterns.  Call it crowd-sourcing the analysts.

Already in 2011, we’ve seen the publication of four well-known vendor and market studies.

1. IDC Marketscape: Worldwide Integrated Talent Management 2011 Vendor Analysis (January 2011);
2. 2011 Magic Quadrant for Corporate Learning Systems (March 2011);
3. 2011 Magic Quadrant for Employee Performance Management Software (March 2011); and
4. Forrester Wave: Talent Management, Q2 2011 (May 2011).

Cornerstone is a Quadruple "Leader"

Just in the last few months, Cornerstone OnDemand has been recognized as a “Leader” (highest possible ranking) in all four of these publications.  This research covers a wide spectrum from standalone performance management and learning management systems to fully integrated suites for integrated talent management.  

The analysts call out specific areas of strength for Cornerstone OnDemand:

• Customer experience is above-average or best-in-class and our Client Success Framework is a successful method for ensuring ongoing customer satisfaction (Gartner); 
• Customer references have been strong (IDC);
• Cornerstone’s performance and succession capabilities are best-in-class across the industry (Gartner);
• Cornerstone leads in performance (Forrester);
• Generally, our products are intuitive and easy-to-use for all types of users (Gartner);
• Cornerstone has gained traction among both large enterprises and SMB organizations (Forrester);
• We lead with product innovation (including our vision for social collaboration in talent management) (Gartner); and
• Our true multi-tenant Software-as-a-Service architecture delivers real scalability (IDC).

These industry analysts labor hard to produce independent, objective research reports that can serve as one tool in your holster for evaluating talent management vendors.