Cornerstone OnDemand has seen nothing but blue skies since its March 2011 IPO, with a 60% increase in revenues from 2011 to 2012 plus bookings growth that grew from $97 million in 2011 to $150 million in 2012. This level of growth often throws organizations into a tailspin, and even CEO Adam Miller admitted that his greatest challenge right now was managing the pace of growth. How does an organization manage that level of growth? The simple answer is teamwork.
We were recently invited to join Cornerstone at its annual convergence users conference and an analyst briefing. Cornerstone’s executive leadership spent the day filling us in on where they’ve been and where they are heading as a focused team with clear messaging across the group. Not surprising, most of the senior leaders started with Cornerstone in individual contributor roles and have grown and developed as the company took flight.
It was easy to see that the executive leadership at Cornerstone was focused and passionate about the direction of the company. It was clear that Adam Miller has built a good team, which appears connected and collaborative.
Developments:
- Updated Cornerstone Connect. Cornerstone has taken a stance that social platforms that drive value will focus on team communications and project management. So the company has re-built its entire social platform and activity stream on this premise. Still a separate module from the rest of its platform, the social platform is offered at an additional cost. Only 22% of Cornerstone’s current clients use Cornerstone Connect today.
- Launch of Universal Employee Profile. Adam Miller simply asked his team how it could get users to their critical information with one-third of the clicks it takes today and the Universal Employee Profile was born. It’s a streamlined approach to capturing and sharing employee data in a single location with easy access.
- Release of updated user interface. The new look and feel rolled out at the conference was definitely cleaner and more intuitive. The audience was definitely happy, with a bit of “it’s about time” running through the audience. It is important to note that this look only exists within the Connect portal and Universal Employee Profile location. It has not been applied across the entire Cornerstone environment – yet.
- Cornerstone for Small Business (Sonar6) getting analytics, goals, and learning. Delivering regulated learning requirements to dispersed audiences can be a critical issue for growing SMBs. Adding this capability creates a much stronger value proposition for Cornerstone’s SMB sales.
Finally they jump into mobile, with Cornerstone Mobile. Cornerstone has focused on providing specific apps for the most likely mobile use cases, i.e. observation checklists, performance approvals, or recruiting opportunities. It is a great start – but a few clients mentioned they would like to see more.
