Do you want to maximize the return on your Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) investment? As you well know, AEM is not an inexpensive software package. While it provides significant revenue-enhancement capabilities to your company, you need to configure these properly to realize the greatest return on investment (ROI).
Some AEM implementations are stalled, or still need to get started. If you are in this position, you need to move forward and convert your website into a revenue generation machine. To achieve this, KBWEB Consult can expertly revive and strengthen your implementation through our five-step “AEM Resurgence” program.
KBWEB Consult’s AEM Resurgence includes the following five phases:
- Phase 1: Diagnose Project Status or Stalemate
- Phase 2: Define Completion Roadmap
- Phase 3: Execute and Optimize Implementation
- Phase 4: Validate and Launch
- Phase 5: Provide Dedicated Outsourced Support
While there are actions you can take in all five of these phases to maximize the return on your AEM investment, many of the critical steps will take place during Phase 3, Execute and Optimize Implementation. I’ve previously touched on this phase in two of my AEM Resurgence articles, “Don’t Start Over: Optimize Your AEM System” and “How AEM Helps Companies Overtake Their Competitors.”
Three ways to maximize your AEM ROI
In this article I am going to focus on the three most critical steps you can take to maximize the return on your AEM investment.
First, upgrade AEM and your other applications
To increase revenue, ensure that you have the latest versions of your applications.
- When I worked with Shimano, the firm was still using Adobe Communique (CQ) Version 3 and was having a difficult time maintaining the system. We worked together to upgrade Shimano’s software to Adobe Experience Manager version 5.6, providing a website that was faster, easier to use, and easy to update. Shimano’s prospects and customers worldwide receiving up-to-date information more quickly, increasing Shimano’s revenue.
- If you had never updated your Adobe Creative Cloud applications since March 2023, you would not have had access to Adobe Firefly, Adobe’s new generative AI capability to generate image and text effects. Older Adobe Creative Cloud applications required your creatives to manually modify your content. Users of newer versions save time by employing tools such as generative fill, generative expand, and generative recolor.
In some cases, merely upgrading your Adobe (or third party) products provides immediate cost savings or revenue-generation results, maximizing the return on your AEM investment without reconfiguration.
Second, upgrade your integrations
Adobe provides its own native integrations between AEM and other Adobe and non-Adobe products, increasing your productivity.
- I’ve previously discussed Edge Delivery Services (and its prior names), which lets you use document-based authoring to create your content in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and other common applications. This speeds web page creation time with minimal requirements for website technicians to modify the content for public use.
- Adobe Express lets you quickly and easily make social posts and stories, ads, banners, logos, flyers and more. You can directly integrate Adobe Express with Adobe Experience Manager. This lets you directly access the assets stored in AEM Assets from within the Adobe Express user interface. You can place content managed in AEM Assets in the Express canvas and then save new or edited content in an AEM Assets repository.
Again, these integrations maximize the return on your AEM investment as your staff works more quickly and easily. For more information, see my best practices and tips to master AEM integrations.
Third, take full advantage of new and upgraded features
Sometimes new AEM capabilities work out of the box. But sometimes you need to perform some legwork to implement them. Perform this legwork to maximize your AEM investment return.
For example, AEM Sites RUM (Real User Monitoring) provides powerful capabilities to monitor and assess your AEM sites’ performance in real time from the viewpoint of the end user. But you (or your KBWEB Consult professional) need to perform some preliminary steps to access this information.
- Enable Sites-RUM: This feature may need to be enabled in your AEM environment. Consult the AEM documentation or your AEM administrator for specific instructions.
- Configure Data Collection: Set up the necessary configurations to start collecting real user data. This may involve adding tracking scripts to your web pages.
- Access Data: Use the AEM interface to access and analyze the collected data. Create dashboards and reports to monitor performance.
Another example: if you need to manage usage restrictions on some of your assets, you can create a specialized labeling system for these restricted assets. But to do this, you need to create a new set of tags, modify the metadata schema, and then create the necessary client libraries, overlays, and servlets for handling the logic. This effort pays off in the long run and ensures you comply with rules for asset use.
By taking advantage of the experience and insights of KBWEB Consult staff, you can implement these features and many others. By doing this you improve your website performance, providing your firm with greater profits.
Consider your next steps to maximize your AEM ROI
Go ahead and maximize the return on your AEM investment. To achieve this, you need a trusted partner who can expertly guide you through your own AEM resurgence. KBWEB Consult helps our clients maximize their ROI on their AEM investment. We unlock all the best AEM features and ensure that our clients get the most out of the platform.
If KBWEB Consult can help you optimize your company’s website performance, please contact us.