ABBYY Survey Reveals Nearly a Third of T&L Businesses Lack AI Governance

New research commissioned by ABBYY reveals the major challenges faced by Transport & Logistics (T&L) 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 nearly a third (30%) of businesses in the T&L sector lacked an AI policy or governance. Managers also complained that they found training harder than expected (30%) and found it difficult to integrate with business processes (25%). 

In response, many business leaders addressed these challenges by combining other technologies, with 36% turning to process intelligence, 27% to RAG, and 25% to AI agents to improve outputs, according to the 2025 ABBYY State of Intelligent Automation Report: GenAI Confessions. More than half (54%) also invested in staff training.

Adding these technologies contributed to 100% of T&L respondents ultimately being happy with their GenAI tools. Half (50%) saw cost savings, while 45% saw outputs more aligned to business goals and the same proportion saw better integration into existing systems.

This is reflected in planned investment in AI for 2026, with the average budget expected to increase by 22%. Goals for GenAI use include reducing boring tasks (21%), collecting and monetising data to unlock new revenue streams, and staying ahead of competitors (both 20%) while the most cited goal was to automate tasks to speed up business processes (38%).

Staff potentially putting businesses at risk with unauthorised use of GenAI

The survey also revealed that more than a third (36%) of T&L 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. They say employees feel the technology makes them look “smarter and more professional” (37%), while nearly three fifths (59%) say it reduces employees’ workload, 65% said it improved collaboration, and 41% said it supports creativity and innovation.

Other key findings from the report

• Use of GenAI is widespread – three quarters (75%) of firms use the tools across most or some of the business.
• 64% use GenAI for automating document business processes (such as accounts payable), 57% for customer service, and 54% for employee productivity.
• When considering improvements to GenAI, top of T&L firms’ wish-list was that it knows which processes could be improved and improve them (32%). This was followed by GenAI asking additional questions to provide a more accurate result (27%), and that it recognises any business system when deployed (27%).

Access the full State of Intelligent Automation: GenAI Confessions 2025 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 64 were T&L organisations.

Research undertaken between 20th of June and 8th of July 2025.