March 19, 2024

Cornerstone Acquisition of Saba – What you need 2 know

Author: Craig Weiss
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There has been a lot of talk recently of the acquisition of Saba by Cornerstone. Some of the information that I have seen out in the world wide web has been erroneous and in other cases, people who are not fully aware of what the acquisition means in relation to systems, offerings and etc., are presented with misinformation.

This post should resolve all those items. Please note, that there are some things still taking place behind the scenes, and at this time, cannot be divulged. But here are the key takeaways (i.e. accurate data).

I decided to write the post in a question type format.

Q/A

Question: I am a current Saba Cloud customer, will I have to switch over to Cornerstone?

Answer: No.

If you are an existing customer of Saba Cloud, including folks who are using the on-premise version, you can stay on the system(s). You will NOT be forced nor pushed over to Cornerstone. Cornerstone will continue to update and enhance Saba Cloud, and support all Saba Cloud product lines.

In other words, new feature sets, enhancements and so forth, will continue with Saba Cloud – for existing customers, including those on-premise.

If you are using Saba Cloud for your learning management, you still can, again, Cornerstone is not going to force you, require you or push you over to Cornerstone Learning.

Question – What if I want to buy Saba Cloud for the learning management system?

Answer: The general answer is NO, if you are a new customer who wants Saba Cloud. You will be referred over to Cornerstone. For example, you wish to purchase Saba Cloud Learning Management for your employees, this is no longer be possible. You will be referred over to Cornerstone Learning.

However, there is an exception – and that is tied to B2C.

If you wish to buy Saba Cloud’s Learning Management system for B2C (i.e. customer education, partner education, and sometimes referred to as Extended Enterprise), it will depend on your use case. It does not mean that all use cases for customer education will be accepted. At the present time, no additional information on the specific types of use cases that will be accepted. Once this information is provided to me, I will publish accordingly.

Question: I am an existing customer who is using Saba Cloud for B2C (i.e. extended enterprise aka customer education, partner education, etc.), will I still be able to use the system?

Answer: YES. All existing customers on Saba Cloud can stay on the system. Regardless of what you are using it for, or modules, for example. Again, the system will be continuously enhanced, updated and supported.

Question: If I want to switch from Saba Cloud to Cornerstone will I be able to do so? I have it for the learning management system.

Answer: Yes.

Question: What products from Saba Cloud are no longer going to be sold? See the product list under each Category.

Category – Learning

  • Saba Enterprise Cloud (SEC)
  • Saba Enterprise Cloud (BTF)
  • Course Builder (Lumesse)

Category – Performance

  • TalentSpace (Halogen)

Category – Recruiting

  • iGrasp (Lumesse)

Category – HR/Full Talent

  • ET Empower (Lumesse)
  • ET Web Enterprise (Lumesse)

As noted earlier, if you are an existing customer all the products listed above will still be supported and you can still renew.

Question – Will any of the Saba Cloud products be integrated with any of the Cornerstone solutions?

Answer: Yes, see below.

Cornerstone Learning

  • Saba Meeting
  • Saba Classroom

Cornerstone Development (Cornerstone’s LXP)

  • Saba Cloud

Cornerstone Content Anytime (Cornerstone’s content marketplace)

  • Saba Cloud

Cornerstone Recruiting

  • Saba TalentLink CRM

Cornerstone HR

  • Saba Org Planning

At the present time, there will not be any integrations between Saba Cloud and Cornerstone Performance. Nor any integration between any Saba solution and Cornerstone Careers.

Q: If I am a current Saba client using TalentSpace will I be able to move over to Cornerstone Performance?

Answer: Yes. You have the option to move over to Cornerstone Performance for full UTM (Unified Talent Management) and Content.

Q: If I am a current Saba Client using TalentLink or Saba Planning, will I be able to move over to similar product offerings from Cornerstone.

Answer: Yes. If you are using TalentLink and wish to move over to Cornerstone Recruiting, for UTM (Unifed Talent Management), you can. UTM is a term used by Cornerstone for their talent management solution.

As for moving from Saba Planning and you want to move over to Cornerstone, It will be an integration to Cornerstone HR.

Benefits of the Acquisition

There are a lot of pluses on acquisition side by Cornerstone. Key wins for me are

  • Data sets for machine learning are now from a combination of users, i.e. 75 million. Which is quite large in the industry – data set wise and a definite big help when it comes to the Cornerstone algorithm for A.I. and machine learning.
  • Continued upgrades and support by Cornerstone for existing Saba clients. I know of many vendors in the learning space and talent space who buy a competitor and then cuts R&D, so the system never gets upgraded or enhancements. And support is significantly streamlined. This is not the case with this acquisition.
  • Stronger capabilities in the Cornerstone product line. For me, I anticipate seeing some serious enhancements into Cornerstone Learning that existed in Saba’s Learning Management for example. Saba Cloud Learning Management was slightly better as it relates to NexGen feature sets compared to Cornerstone Learning, especially in machine learning. Expect Cornerstone Learning to improve upon their feature sets and go beyond, thanks to the buy.

Cornerstone has told me that Cornerstone Learning will continue to push the NexGen envelope if you will, with better digital coaching, including AI driven digital coaching tools and the ability to change managers to coaches (as it relates to the digital coaching). I think those are two very cool capabilities.

Bottom Line

If you are a considering adding Saba: me-time which is Saba’s LXP, that is no longer going to be possible. Rather, you will be recommended to select Cornerstone Development.

You can expect some additional changes in the months ahead especially on the Cornerstone side of the house, including Cornerstone Learning. The changes will be beneficial (based on what I have been told).

Saba Cloud’s LMS for customer education/partner education (aka extended enterprise) is far better than what Cornerstone can currently do in the same space (i.e. customer education).

I hope that the dependence on the use case as the key factor will be eliminated, and if you want SC LMS for your B2C, then they will take you.

Because despite the pluses of the Cornerstone Learning solution, there are still areas that Saba Cloud’s Learning Management did well. The back-end for example (Admin wise) was easier to figure out (Cornerstone Learning can be a bit challenging and sometimes overwhelms folks).

I’ll leave that up to them to resolve that.

And I hope this post, resolves

any

Misinformation.

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