Before I discuss AEM implementation health checks, or the need for quarterly AEM audits as part of your proactive AEM maintenance strategy, let’s discuss your physical health.

What would happen if you didn’t visit a dentist for 10 years? Rolling Oaks Dental notes that while some people do just fine, others suffer from the ill effects of no dental care.

Untreated periodontal disease going ten years without enough pain to prompt the patient to seek care is common. I probably see it at least once a week on a new patient. Periodontal disease can go many years, sometimes more than a decade, before it hurts. Typically, by the time the gums hurt, treatment options can be very limited.

In the same way that your body needs regular checkups, your Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) system needs regular checkups.

I’ve previously discussed the benefits of an AEM implementation health check as part of the first phase of KBWEB Consult’s “AEM Resurgence” program.

In the first phase, KBWEB Consult practitioners assess the current state of your AEM implementation. We do this by performing an implementation health check.

  • How is the current AEM implementation performing?
  • What version of AEM are you running?
  • Have you attempted to upgrade your implementation before?
  • Afterwards, why did the implementation stall? Were there blockers or technical gaps that forced abandonment of the upgrade?

The result of this implementation health check and assessment is a project status report. This report lists the things that went wrong. In addition, it also provides actionable insights on how to optimize your AEM system and get things back on track.

How frequently should you perform an AEM implementation health check?

In the context of AEM Resurgence, the AEM implementation health check is a two-time audit that is performed during an AEM Resurgence project: once during Phase 1 at the beginning of the project, and a second time during Phase 3 after KBWEB Consult completed its improvements.

But what if those were the ONLY two times that you performed the AEM implementation health check? And after project completion, you never performed it again?

What if you never checked your AEM system health for the next ten years after an upgrade?

Obviously, a periodic assessment of your AEM system is beneficial to catch problems before they become serious. Most stalled or underperforming AEM platforms don’t fail overnight—they drift off course, quietly.

At KBWEB Consult, we believe that quarterly AEM audits aren’t just maintenance—they’re momentum. Therefore, quarterly implementation health checks should be part of your proactive AEM maintenance strategy.

What 4 items should you include in your quarterly AEM audit?

KBWEB includes 4 items in our customers’ quarterly AEM audits.

1. Platform health

Are you up to date, stable, and scalable?

  • Are you running the latest service pack or cloud update?
  • Any deprecated components still in use?
  • How’s your error log trending—improving, or growing?
  • Are your custom components documented and reusable?

2. Integrations

Are all key systems syncing cleanly?

  • Are APIs working as expected with your CRM, DAM, and analytics?
  • Any failed syncs or outdated connectors?
  • Are webhook triggers firing on time?
  • Has data flow been QA’ed across channels?

3. Performance

Is speed keeping up with traffic and content?

  • Are key pages loading in less than 2 seconds across devices?
  • Has traffic increased without performance drops?
  • Are caching layers (Dispatcher/CDN) optimized?
  • Any unexpected server load or memory spikes?

4. Authorship workflows

Are your teams still efficient, or getting tangled?

  • Is content authorship still efficient, or getting messy?
  • Are approvals automated and traceable?
  • Do authors have clear templates and guidelines?
  • Are teams duplicating effort due to unclear roles?

What 3 benefits will you realize from quarterly AEM implementation health checks?

Quarterly AEM audits don’t just benefit you technically. They also benefit your bottom line. When you adopt a proactive AEM maintenance strategy, you realize the following benefits to your return on investment (ROI).

1. Reduced costs through automation

You want your system and your business processes to execute at peak performance. After an implementation health check, you can rest assured that your system is using AEM’s artificial intelligence capabilities to their fullest. This reduces costs as your marketers, creatives, and technologist complete content updates and deploy web pages more quickly.

2. Increased revenue through automation

As your staff deploys changes more quickly, your prospects and customers can act on these changes more quickly and buy your latest products and services now.

3. Increased awareness of your company

As you intelligently deploy AEM, including its advanced omnichannel messaging capabilities, more prospects will learn about your company, visit your website, and consume your content. And because you optimized your site for maximum performance, prospects won’t leave your site in frustration waiting for a page to load.

When should you start scheduling your AEM implementation health checks?

Don’t wait 10 years to check the health of your system.

Schedule a free assessment call with KBWEB Consult now at https://calendly.com/krassimir-boyanov/30min.