The Correlation between going Cheap and Botched AEM Implementations!

              Congratulations, you’ve just purchased arguably the best content management system in the world! Now What? Well, it needs to be implemented and although you’d think that talented team of yours, with your guidance could figure out how to stand the system up, that’s probably not the best idea. Like everyone else, you’re going to have to hire a team to implement it for you. Traditionally, this means Adobe Global Services, one of their partners, or a company like mine. Regardless of the route you decide to go what ultimately matters is getting the most out of this valuable CMS with as little problems as possible.

                Over the last 5 years that I’ve been staffing in the Adobe Marketing Cloud world I’ve seen and heard about my fair share of “botched” implementations. Though there always seems to be some sort of “rational” explanation as to why this has occurred, when the layers are peeled back all these implementations have one thing in common, implementing the system for as low a cost as possible was always the top priority. If you’ve followed my work for any length of time you’ve probably heard me compare CMS’s to cars using the analogy of AEM being the Bentley of content management systems. So let me ask you a question, why would anyone spend a ridiculous amount of money on purchasing a Bentley and then do things like, keep it outside because they don’t want to pay to park it in a garage, or put regular fuel in it even though it's supposed to get premium unleaded because it’s cheaper, or only get the oil changed once a year instead of every 3 months like the manufacturer suggests? These things don’t make any sense and anyone can see that it’s going to end up costing more in the long run. So if we can see this so plainly with cars, why can’t we see it when implementing a CMS. I’ve seen companies try to implement it themselves, or choose a company that has no track record of implementation success, or try to do everything offshore simply to save money. It makes sense that companies have budgets but the outcome is always the same, a new partner or consultant has to come in and not only properly do the implementation but also fix all the work the cheap labor messed up. This means, more work, more hours and ultimately a much higher price tag then what should have been.

If you’ve already made the purchase and find yourself in this “how do we do this as cheap as possible?” situation all I can say is please reconsider but, if you haven’t made the purchase yet seriously consider these 3 points before you do.

1. Are we willing to spend money upfront to have a successful implementation?
2. Do we have the budget to spend the money upfront for a successful implementation?
3. Do I know what our ROI on a successful implementation will be?

Make sure you can answer these questions with certainty and choose wisely because if you don’t you very well may be the next “botched” implementation. Now, please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying as I don’t want you thinking that I don’t think cost should be a consideration as it absolutely should but you need to understand what you’re getting into. AEM isn’t cheap, implementing it isn’t cheap, and maintaining it isn’t cheap but this is an investment and needs to be managed as such. There’s no point in purchasing an enterprise level system if you’re only going to get the functionality of an open source system out of it and the fact of the matter is the experts that can bring your grand vision to fruition don’t cost $75 per hour. A wise man once said “you can either make mistakes yourself or learn from the mistakes of others.” If you truly want to save money, learn from the mistakes of others, invest in experienced talent that will do things right the first time around and get everything you can out of AEM!