Discover 10 Best Cornerstone Alternatives & Strategic Competitors (2024)

Cornerstone OnDemand is a popular choice for learning and talent management, but it's not the only option available. As organizations evolve, exploring alternatives can help find the perfect fit for your needs.

This blog examines ten top Cornerstone alternatives, each offering unique features for learning management and talent development. We'll highlight key aspects of each platform, helping you identify solutions that align with your organization's current needs and future goals.

By reviewing these options, you'll gain insights to support your decision-making process in choosing the right learning and talent management tool for your workforce.

10 Best Cornerstone Alternatives & Strategic Competitors

1. iMocha

iMocha's Skills Intelligence Cloud redefines workforce development using an AI-driven solution that presents a 360-degree view of employee skills in order to identify skill gaps with precision. With the right learning paths for both the individual and the organization, iMocha helps organizations build a future-ready workforce converting skill insights with strategic benefits.

Here are the features that make it a top Cornerstone alternative you should try:

• Talent Acquisition Platform: Hire faster with a skills-first approach. It supports Remote Hiring, Diversity Hiring, and Contingent Workforce Hiring.
• Talent Management Platform: Empowers employees to grow their careers with Career Planning, Career Development, AI-Skills Match, Internal Mobility, and Workforce Agility capabilities.
• Skills Assessments: A library of more than 3000 out-of-the-box skills assessments and consulting for some custom assessments to measure and verify the skills of candidates and employees.
• Skills Taxonomy & Skills Ontology: A world-class taxonomy that classifies skills at a granular level using State-of-the-art AI-driven models to form a skill-based job architecture in organizations.
• Skills Inventory: Helps organizations have a clear sense of their current skills landscape and the future skills landscape needed to fill skills gaps by hiring for job fit, upskilling employees, and redeploying staff to critical initiatives.
• Skills Intelligence Cloud: Offers skills insights that help enterprises implement upskilling and reskilling programs, evaluate the ROI of learning programs, validate primary and secondary skills in their organization, benchmark skill proficiency and optimize skill intelligence for right decision-making.
  

2. Workday

Workday is a cloud-based enterprise management solution that combines the functionality of human capital management, financial management, and enterprise resource planning, enabling organizations to improve HR, finance, and planning processes. Here’s why these features make it a strong Cornerstone alternative:

• Personalized Experience: Driven by AI, it provides personalized user experiences based on the user role, tasks, and goals, reducing efforts and improving productivity and engagement.
• Talent Management: Track and develop employee skills, aligning the development of talent with organizational needs and goals with the help of performance management, succession planning, and career development tools.
• Payroll and Workforce Solutions: Provide accurate payroll and workforce management, including time tracking, scheduling, and absence management.
• Integrated Analytics: Advanced analytics and reporting capabilities for workforce and financial performance.
• Worldwide Compliance: Guarantees compliance with foreign regulations and standards, equipping organizations with solutions to oversee compliance in various regions and sectors.

3. HowNow

HowNow is an all-in-one learning experience platform (LXP) that enables organizations to create, manage, and deliver unique learning experiences for their people.

Below are its key features, that make it a great Cornerstone alternative:

• AI-Based Personalization: Provides customized learning journeys based on individual profiles, roles, skills, and objectives.
• Content Curation & Creation: With this tool it’s easy to curate and create content from both internal and external sources.
• Skill Mapping: Maps, maintains, and grows resources aligned with organizational needs by mapping employee skills and determining learning needs as necessary.
• Social and Collaborative Learning: This enables knowledge-sharing processes by means of peer-to-peer interaction, user-generated content, etc.
• Analytics: Offers deep insights into how learners engage with it, track progress, and analyze business outcomes.

4. Docebo

Docebo is an all-in-one learning management system (LMS) that is concerned with the delivery, tracking, and management of employee training programs. It is designed to grow the skill sets of employees across companies of all sizes. Here is a rundown of its capabilities that position it as a Cornerstone alternative:

• AI-based learning: Use artificial intelligence to customize learning experiences for users and to recommend relevant content.
• Social learning: Provides a way to share knowledge using user-generated content, forums, and collaborative learning spaces.
• Mobile Learning: Provides a mobile application for accessing training materials and courses while on the move.
• Extended Enterprise: Enable organizations to train outsiders — be it partners, customers, or stakeholders.
• Analytics and Reporting: Offers in-depth reporting about learner progress, course efficacy, and ROI.

5. Thrive

Thrive is a powerful learning management system (LMS) with an intuitive UX that empowers organizations to run a better training and development program.  

Here is a breakdown of its features that make it a great Cornerstone alternative:

• Dynamic Learning Pathways: Uses intelligent algorithms to map a learning path based on each user's performance and objectives.
• Easy Content Management: Provides a hassle-free interface to create, manage, and edit content, in different formats, conveniently.
• Competency Tracking: Helps in closely tracking employee skills and competencies combined with learning objectives based on organizational needs.
• Collaborative Learning Environment: Encourages engagement using discussion forums, peer assessments, and team-learning activities.
• Reporting and Analytics: Offers insights and data visualization on learning effectiveness & ROI.

6. Nifty Learning

Nifty Learning is a new-age learning management system (LMS) that is designed to facilitate engaging and effective training for organizations.

Read on for a look at its features, some of which make it stand out from Cornerstone:

• AI-Powered Content Recommendations: Uses artificial intelligence to recommend content based on what users have engaged with and enjoyed in the past.
• Interactive Course Builder: A dynamic interface for creating interactive courses with multimedia elements without requiring extensive technical knowledge.
• Skill-Based Learning Paths: Supports the design of personalized learning paths that align with skills and career objectives.
• Advanced Analytics Dashboard: Provides detailed insights into learner progress, levels of engagement, and training effectiveness.
• Compliance Tracking: Makes the management and reporting of mandatory training and certifications easy.

7. Disprz

In a nutshell, Disprz is a powerful AI Learning and skilling suite enabling workplace transformation through knowledge and skill development.

Here’s what makes it a worthy Cornerstone alternative:

• Skill Intelligence – By using AI, it identifies the gap and the relevant learning paths that are most useful to close that gap.
• Role-based learning journeys: Offer personalized learning journeys based on desired roles and career paths.
• Performance Support Tools: Offer resources for on-the-job learning to help employees learn while they work.
• Engagement and Gamification: Integrates interactive features such as quizzes, challenges, and leaderboards to increase learner engagement.
• Views and Insights: Provides reports on progress, skill development, and ROI of learning to facilitate data-driven decision-making.
  

8. Edvanta

Edvanta is a new and innovative LMS that caters to the needs of modern organizations and their ever-evolving training and development requirements. Offering a competitive solution in the e-learning market, Edvanta is a notable Cornerstone competitor with a suite of features:

• AI-based Recommend Learning: This feature uses AI to know which courses and content are most relevant to the learner profiles and what the goals of the organization are.
• Flexible Content: Offers simplified mediums to create rich learning content in the form of interactive content and assessments.
• Skill Gap Analysis: Analyzes the skill gap in the organization and the skill gaps can be remedied through specialized learning inputs.
• Extensive Performance Tracking: Provides insights into learner progress, course performance, and training impact.
• Personalized Learning Journeys: Enables the creation of personalized learning paths based on role or career trajectory.

9. Absorb LMS

Absorb is quite an all-rounder – a well-rounded learning management system with a contemporary approach to corporate training and development. A look under the hood at what makes it a great Cornerstone competitor.

• Smart administration: Smart admin features like automatic course assignments, reminders & certifications help save administrative time.
• Branding Customization: It gives organizations the freedom to create the LMS in their own desired looks and feels and create a branding consistently throughout the brand and makes sure the whole experience is seamless throughout.
• Social Learning Customization: In collaborative learning learner-generated content is encouraged, and peer-to-peer interactions help to create a sense of community.
• Analytics: It offers advanced and customizable analytics and reports to keep tabs on progress and the impact of the training.
• Compliance Training Management: Offers features for tracking required training and certifications.

10. Degreed

Degreed is an all-in-one skill-based learning experience platform (LXP). Let's go through the features to understand why it stands out as a Cornerstone alternative:

• Skill-based Learning: Makes users discover, assess, and develop competencies that matter to them, focusing the learning experience on skills.
• Content Aggregation: Organizes learning material from multiple sources; internal, and external content providers and open educational resources.
• Customized Learning Journeys: Highlights relevant content and builds personalized learning journeys using AI in accordance with an individual goal and unique interest.
• Skill Measurement and Verification: Supports assessment and validation of skills through peer and manager reviews.
• Career Mobility: Eases internal talent mobility by linking skills development to career opportunities inside the organization.
• Analytics and Reporting: Provides detail into skills gaps, learner engagement and business impact of learning.

Cornerstone is just one of many options in the learning and talent management landscape. A few are exceptional when it comes to AI-enabled personalization; while others shine by supporting skills mapping, collaborative learning, or integration.

The best alternative will ultimately manage all learning management but also give your ideas on how to approach your recruitment, development, and retention policies. With the right learning and talent management platform, you can prepare your workforce for the next level and stay on top of the game in this fast-paced business era.

FAQs

1. What are the best Cornerstone alternatives?  

The talent management market offers several strong Cornerstone alternatives in form of skills management software, each with unique strengths. Top options include iMocha, Workday, and HowNow.   

2. Why is iMocha better than Cornerstone?

iMocha stands out from Cornerstone with its Skills Intelligence Cloud, offering deeper assessments and AI-driven mapping. Its comprehensive tools provide a more holistic, skills-first approach to talent management, better addressing modern workforce needs.