The Talent Management Trifecta

Today, global research firm IDC published a series of MarketScape reports rating the leading vendors in the worldwide integrated talent management market. Cornerstone OnDemand has, for the third year in a row, been recognized as a "Market Leader" in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Integrated Talent Management 2013 Vendor Analysis.

IDC’s analyst Lisa Rowan specifically calls attention to Cornerstone’s "strong functional capabilities, true multitenant SaaS for scalability, and solid customer references."

With this report, Cornerstone is one of only two vendors recognized as a Leader by all three of the top technology industry analyst firms (Forrester, Gartner and IDC). In other words, "The Talent Management Trifecta."

(In addition to IDC’s analysis, Cornerstone was recognized as a leader in the 2013 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Talent Management Suites report and "The Forrester Wave™: Talent Management, Q1 2013" report.)

Cornerstone is also a "Market Leader" in IDC’s separate sub-reports covering Performance Management and Learning Management.

The LMS report complements the recent findings of UK research firm Elearnity, and their take on the EMEA learning management systems (LMS) market.

IDC also positioned Cornerstone’s up-and-coming Recruiting Cloud just a hairline off the "Market Leader" after less than a year on the market. You’ll need a magnifying glass to tell the difference.

And it makes sense: one year ago the Recruiting Cloud didn’t exist. Today, we’re delivering a world-class talent acquisition solution with advanced functionality that supports the modern ways organizations recruit both internal and external talent -- going beyond what existing legacy application tracking systems can do.

There’s one important distinction that merits discussion here: which type of solution provider is better at solving real-world talent management challenges: an ERP generalist or a talent management specialist?

With today’s IDC reports, Cornerstone is the only independent, best-of-breed vendor recognized as a leader in talent management by Gartner, Forrester and IDC. That might sound like a lot of qualifiers, but we think it really matters.

If you are a buyer in this market, the other two companies most often seen in Gartner, Forrester and IDC reports are lumbering global ERP software giants. That means there’s a rather stark choice today between:

One can only look to our industry leading growth rates to realize companies of all sizes are demanding the unification and functional depth of best-of-breed specialists like Cornerstone.

And we’re not resting on our laurels. While other legacy vendors continue to move relatively lower in their rankings (perhaps as a result of wrestling with integrating acquired products and companies), Cornerstone continues to move "up and to the right" in the market leader category of all the major industry analyst reports.

As a former industry analyst, I have come to realize rating vendors can be an exhaustive and diligent process. I think research like IDC’s is a tremendous value to the market and buyers looking to understand key market trends in selecting the right vendor. We are thankful for IDC’s research and the recognition of our execution, long-term strategy, and ongoing product and services superiority.

As the IDC report puts it, Cornerstone’s "strengths include very high scores in customer service, depth of capability of individual modules, cost appropriateness, and timeliness of releases."