ABBYY Survey Reveals Manufacturing Businesses Struggle with GenAI Skills Gap
New research commissioned by ABBYY reveals the major challenges faced by manufacturing businesses trying to integrate sophisticated Generative AI (GenAI) technology – prompting the use of other AI to improve outputs.
The survey, conducted by Opinium, revealed that 34% of manufacturing leaders said staff struggled with deploying it due to a lack of skill, 31% found training the models harder than expected, and and 30% had difficulty integrating with current business processes. Over a fifth (21%) lacked an AI policy or governance. Managers also complained that staff misuse the tools (23%).
In response, many business leaders address these challenges by combining other technologies, with 40% turning to AI agents to improve outputs, 34% turning to process intelligence, and 25% to RAG, according to the 2025 ABBYY State of Intelligent Automation Report: GenAI Confessions. More than half (53%) also invested in staff training.
Adding these technologies contributed to 98% of manufacturing respondents ultimately being happy with their GenAI tools. As a result 57% saw output quality and consistency improve, and 41% saw cost savings. 43% saw more accurate and reliable results, and 44% saw better integration into existing systems.
Despite this optimism, however, the average budget for GenAI is only expected to increase by 18% in 2026 – low compared with 24% in financial services and 22% in Transport & Logistics.
Businesses are spending money on GenAI tools that promise more than they can provide. In some cases, they don’t even need it. Before moving forward with leveraging GenAI tools or agentic AI, companies need to first evaluate their current processes and create a visibility map of their workflow with data analytics tools such as process intelligence. When training models prove more difficult than expected, pre-trained, purpose-built AI turns out to be the right solution. We’ve helped customers like a global fast-food chain improve the extraction of data from thousands of lease agreements by 82% by using document AI to improve GenAI outputs.
Maxime Vermeir, Senior Director of AI at ABBYY
Evaluate processes before investing in GenAI, says ABBYY
The survey also revealed that more than a third (45%) of manufacturing leaders admit that a driving factor for introducing GenAI was that employees were already using it on a Bring Your Own Software (BYOS) basis for personal productivity – which could impact security concerns over ‘Shadow AI’.
Generally, leaders say staff are optimistic about GenAI (92%). Half (50%) say employees feel the technology makes them look “smarter and more professional”, while 58% say it improves collaboration, and 57% said it supports creativity and innovation.
GenAI is creating remarkable opportunities to reimagine how work gets done, which is rightfully generating a great deal of excitement. However, ‘shadow AI’, when individuals use commonly available tools like ChatGPT, Grok, or Perplexity without oversight at work, potentially raises serious data privacy and compliance concerns. The corporate benefits of GenAI’s potential is truly unlocked when leaders drive secure, strategic adoption with risk management as a priority.
Ulf Persson, CEO at ABBYY
Other key findings from the report
- Goals for GenAI use include increasing efficiency and customer service (64%), and improving on existing results (55%)
- 58% use GenAI for data analysis and insights generation, 51% for customer service and the same proportion for employee productivity, 49% for sales and marketing optimization, and 48% for automating document business processes (such as accounts payable).
- When considering improvements to GenAI, top of manufacturing firms’ wish-list was that GenAI would save time through manually processing information from documents (32%). This was followed by knowing which processes could be improved, and improve them (30%), and GenAI asking additional questions to provide a more accurate result (26%).
Access the full State of Intelligent Automation: GenAI Confessions 2025 report here for more information.
Methodology
Opinium research of 1,200 senior managers or above in companies of 100+ employees in the US, UK, France, Germany, Australia and Singapore, of which 151 were manufacturing organisations.
Research undertaken between 20th of June and 8th of July 2025.
About ABBYY
ABBYY helps organizations optimize processes, accelerate decisions, and drive better outcomes with Process AI and Document AI. More than 10,000 enterprises, including many Fortune 500 companies, rely on ABBYY’s 35 years of innovation to turn business data into actionable insights that improve the way we work and live. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, and offices in 13 countries, ABBYY leads the way for smarter agentic automation. For more information, visit www.abbyy.com/company and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
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