AEMO

Key Outcomes

• Clear identification of issues in the current DXP implementation.
• Practical assessment of Headless, Composable and SaaS options for AEMO.
• Immediate savings through key operating model changes.
• Potential to save over $1 million in operating costs over four years.
• Nine actionable recommendations to improve performance and customer experience.
• Recommendation to defer migration to a Headless platform until 2027.

Overview

LuminateCX partnered with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) to address several CX, website and content management challenges. Like many Sitecore customers in 2024, the decision to upgrade, modernise or migrate to another provider is a very real issue. Whilst we believe the issue is not specific to Sitecore, there is a drive from senior technology leaders to make smart, cost-effective decisions that balance the needs of the organisation, their employees and most importantly, their customers.

The DXP and WebOps world is changing, and organisations need to harness modern approaches cost-effectively with zero disruption.

The Challenge

• Critical Infrastructure SLAs were not being met cost-effectively.
• Team members with adjacent skillsets (developers) being required to troubleshoot application and infrastructure issues.
• An over-reliance on poor vendor documentation and guidance led to an ineffective architecture.
• Perceived licencing challenges also led to a misalignment in architecture decisions.
• Lack of working High Availability/Disaster Recovery (HA/DR) capability.
• An unsupported Sitecore version with potentially high upgrade costs.
• Poor original implementation of Sitecore SXA with some existing tech debt (largely fixed by new agency team).
• Lack of maintenance of content, media items, layouts and templates (a common story with all CMSs).
• Multiple websites with deviations in architecture leading to lack of reuse.
• Poor front-end search implementation due to reliance on Apache Solr (a common issue for many customers).
• Poor clarity from vendor and market on Headless transition options, approach and costs.
• No immediate business benefit from migrating to Headless or SaaS CMS options, whether Sitecore or otherwise.

Additionally, AEMO, down to the nature of its customer/stakeholder base, is early on its journey to implement strong marketing performance metrics and tracking, to truly understand user journeys and customer impact of the website, largely due to their limited resources and funds being used to fight the issues above.

The Solution

1. Issues Documentation: Discussed and documented all key business issues, prioritising those that should, could and must be solved.
2. Requirements Development: Wrote new requirements for the organisation that spanned technologies, processes and people.
3. Trend Analysis: Top-down business analysis of the Headless, SaaS and Composable trends.
4. Detailed Budgeting: Including licencing, hosting, upgrade, support, FTE and existing software.
5. Vendor Engagement: Engaged selected vendors in the market, including the incumbent, Sitecore, and selected modern headless vendors.
6. Strategic Evaluation: Evaluated the decision between upgrade, modernisation or migration.

The Recommendation

The business had no demonstrable reason to migrate to a headless architecture, and the cost alone was too high.

At LuminateCX we recommend headless migration only when there's a clear business case and demonstrable benefits.

A headless migration for an organisation like AEMO is best when:

• You have a need to completely rebrand, redesign or change your overall website CX.
• You are aligning your marketing website approach with your technology implementations.
• You can chart a cost-effective, zero-disruption migration.
• You can see significant, demonstrable post-migration benefits.

Otherwise, the current approach is completely fit-for-purpose for AEMO's needs.

Major changes recommended:

• Change DevOps and 24x7 Support from internal teams and agency, through a modern outsource arrangement.
• Upgrade to the latest version of Sitecore 10.4 and downgrade to XM Edition.
• Clean up content, media and page items to deliver a cleaner author and website visitor experience.
• Adopt a modern SaaS-based, Composable search tool, reducing dependency on Solr.
• Modern analytics and performance tracking, including better integration with Google Analytics 4 and a robust customer experience metric framework.
• 4 other CX improvements were recommended and could be funded from savings identified.

Results

The new AEMO roadmap could save AEMO over $1.02 million over four years. This includes improved content management workflows, reduced reliance on outdated technology, and a more secure, scalable infrastructure. Additionally, the proposed customer experience improvements will boost website usability, making content more accessible and future-proofing the platform.

LuminateCX brought a professional approach, with a clear plan and methodology, which was a differentiator. Their independence in providing advice was evident. We felt assured that we had the 'A team' handling our engagement, particularly in technology, auditing, and user analysis.
- Woody Lo, AEMO

Conclusion

The engagement with AEMO highlights the value of LuminateCX's independent, methodical approach to digital optimisation and transformation.

By focusing on both immediate technology fixes and long-term process enhancements, LuminateCX delivered a roadmap that improves both cost efficiency and digital performance, while positioning AEMO for future success. LuminateCX's expertise in auditing, process optimisation and customer experience design provided AEMO with a strategic, sustainable path to modernisation.