I've done so many AEM sites for clients with more money than sense. I had to quit the agency business to get away from it. It's absolutely sensible for a big company with complex requirements to buy an off-the-shelf enterprise software package even at a substantial price tag, it's just that AEM absolutely sucks at almost everything. They sell it with the stupid Adobe Marketing Cloud saying you'll get CMS, analytics, A/B testing, ad targeting, yadda yadda in one giant package. Only they're all just a mishmash of acquisitions that don't integrate well at all and none of them are close to the best products for their task. They made for a very compelling sales pitch back in like 2013 when options were more limited and enterprise CMS was a busy space, but no one should be fooled by this in the 2020s.

Also, I can't prove this, but I am highly suspicious that Adobe and their integrators cook up a lot of these deals and get service firms like Accenture to recommend their products for a kickback. I've been stared at by their sales team asking me to help sell their products and refused. Not ever offered anything under the table but I felt like I was getting winked at.