True to its name, Cornerstone OnDemand pivots on a moment’s notice as the HCM learning software vendor embarks on a replatforming effort after a brief AI detour.
At a recent customer event in New York City, Cornerstone unveiled Workplace AI, which combines PeopleGraph for workforce data, Skills Engine for upskilling and reskilling inferencing, as well as a selection of bundling packages designed to meet the agentic needs of many of its 7,000+ learning and development customers.
The move came 13 months after the launch of Cornerstone Galaxy AI and Cornerstone Transform, both of which revolved around a talent intelligence platform that the vendor has developed for the AI era, along with the skills engine that it acquired from Skyhive in 2024.
“It’s a large pivot,’’ said CEO Himanshu Palsule, but “Cornerstone must evolve’’ in order to address the real-time AI needs of its customers and prospects. In the face of a momentous moment that requires companies to adapt or risk becoming irrelevant, Cornerstone customers are already streamlining their operations or taking immediate steps to bridge skills gaps among their new and existing employees. For starters, most of these workers have already been bombarded with an onslaught of AI signals and recommendations with an increasingly number of them incorporating these automated tools into their workflows unilaterally or by way of vendors, partners and competitors.
While some of the components like the skills engine from Cornerstone Galaxy AI and Cornerstone Transform are finding their way into the new Cornerstone Workplace AI, much of the reengineering will manifest itself through a growing menu of agents for skills architect, onboarding, internal mobility, coaching, and job readiness.
Palsule said nine pilot customers have already started using Workplace AI agents for onboarding in a healthcare setting and reskilling and upskilling wealth advisors at a financial services company.
Brad Novak, CTO of Rathbones Group and an early adopter of Workplace AI, said what appeals to the UK-based financial advisor is the real-time capabilities of these AI agents that help train and deliver new skills across the firm’s 700+ financial planners and investment managers overseeing a portfolio of £113 billion in assets. “You hire them and you train them in real time. It can’t be all online training, but you need to bring them on board fast,’’ Novak said.
Other pilot customers like Cisco said demographic changes, along with the shifting expectations of a new generation of workers, could result in severe skills shortages in the next five years if companies do not invest in a real-time workforce intelligence platform that fosters dynamic learning and career development.
Another scenario calls for Cornerstone partnering with labor departments and agencies all over the world clamoring to reskill their workforce by harnessing the interactions and best practices of 140 million regular Cornerstone users, along with the rich repository of skills taxonomy, workforce profiles and learning content, all of which could be extracted, reconfigured and automatically distributed through agent packs bought individually to meet their specific needs.
Palsule added that Workplace AI will be particularly useful for net new customers that have not been exposed to Cornerstone before and would rather invest in agents and tactical solutions like Workplace AI than spending millions of dollars in a new Learning Management System.
Mini Peiris, chief marketing officer of Cornerstone, emphasized that the new Cornerstone Workforce AI is in no way a forced migration path for its current customers. Unlike its earlier approach, the new platform offers plenty of on-ramp opportunities for new and existing customers to transform themselves through AI with specific goals to tie these digital agents to action and insights, ultimately generating quantifiable and predictable outcomes.
The pivot represents the latest example of how AI is pressuring HCM software vendors like Cornerstone known for its learning and development heritage to adapt and overhaul their playbooks in order to capture the new opportunities of tying real-time agentic insights and responses into actions that deliver business results.
Before an audience of hundreds of HR and Training executives at the event, Guna Jayaraman, chief AI officer of Cornerstone, demonstrated how these AI-generated insights and recommendations can be easily delivered through agents for a variety of use cases, emphasizing the key value proposition lies in its open integration into partner-enabled tools from Salesforce to OpenAI. That in turn will usher new ways to facilitate learning and career growth with trust and governance firmly established, Jayaraman said.
