Are the Benefits of AI Clear?
by Bruce Orcutt, Chief Marketing Officer
Don’t believe all the negative headlines about the lack of ROI for artificial intelligence. We’ve got proof that taking a purpose-built approach to AI actually delivers value—but it all comes down to your strategy.
However, some statistics should cause pause. According to PEX, companies wasted $6.2 billion on AI projects that failed to deliver ROI in 2024, and RAND Corporation reported that 80% of AI projects fail. The silver lining comes from a Gartner survey that found 45% of leaders at organizations with high AI maturity will have their AI initiatives remain in production for three or more years.
ABBYY has always been an AI-first company and has more than 35 years’ experience developing document-centric and process-optimizing AI. We’re committed to driving measurable outcomes with our purpose-built AI solutions, which we highlighted at our global events this year. From ABBYY AI Summits in Vienna, London, and Austin, to the AI Pulse by ABBYY Developers Conference in Bengaluru, we shared how customers leveraged ABBYY Document AI and Process AI to improve operational efficiencies and customer experiences. Here are a few examples.
ABBYY customer results shed light on what’s possible with purpose-built AI
In Vienna, we addressed hype with generative AI pilots and whether the technology was better, easier, and cheaper to use than OCR or more advanced intelligent document processing solutions. Short answer: no. Forbes reported that 90% of gen AI projects did not move into production. The real solution is to use AI that is purpose-built for business processes. This was exemplified by the Carlsberg Group, which now saves more than 140 hours per month and achieves 92% touchless processing using ABBYY in their order-to-delivery processes. ABBYY helped Carlsberg deliver their brews to market faster by reducing the need for checking and entering order information manually into their system.
While large language models (LLMs) aren’t a one-size fits all solution for enterprise challenges, their efficacy can be significantly improved when powered by purpose-built AI. The benefits of combining an LLM with ABBYY were highlighted in London by Lloyds Banking Group. They shared how they built an agentic AI system to achieve collaboration, dynamic tasking, and orchestrated autonomy with the mission of improving customer expectations and experiences.
Specifically for customer onboarding, ABBYY Document AI is used for data extraction and pre-segmentation with key metrics of reducing susceptibility to hallucinations during KYC and decreasing inaccuracies when testing against regulatory compliance standards. The business value was evident: increasing the speed of onboarding and customer satisfaction and ensuring compliance standards are met.
Read more insights from the ABBYY AI Summit London from this recap by Alex Pell, technology editor of The London Standard and chair of London Tech Week 2025.
The power of combining gen AI and Document AI was again illustrated in Austin with the example of a fast-food franchise. The customer has 40,000 locations globally, requiring its headquarters to painstakingly review 30,000 lease agreements annually in multiple file formats and languages to meet new requirements from the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Despite trying to use gen AI to extract data from more than 350 fields from lease-related documents weekly and input the data into their lease management system, the company only received 60% accuracy. By combining the power of ABBYY AI, the franchise increased accuracy to 82%, resulting in accelerated business processes and smarter decision-making
ABBYY AI Summits were our opportunities to educate customers on the latest AI trends, tools, myths, truths, and outcomes. But we also had the developer community in mind.
Developers gather to demonstrate value of Document AI, MCP, and agentic automation at ABBYY DevCon
The third annual AI Pulse by ABBYY Developer Conference in Bengaluru, India, showed developers how quickly they can solve a business challenge by combining a variety of AI tools, such as ABBYY Document AI and Process AI, RAG, LLMs, and AI agents, and making it functional for the enterprise within hours.
The most popular workshop was led by Matt Netkow, Head of Developer Relations at ABBYY, titled, "Creating a Document Processing MCP Server," using one of the hottest AI technologies in the AI ecosystem. It was crafted for developers eager to explore advanced workflow automation and focused on constructing a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server tailored for intelligent document processing (IDP) tasks. The session showed attendees how easily they could streamline a typical bank account onboarding process and how to manage tasks including document uploads, data extraction, validation, and final submission. The benefits of AI are definitely clear in a time when banks are under continued regulatory scrutiny and in a highly competitive fintech environment.
ABBYY hackathon winners best illustrated the purpose, innovation, and business value of AI.
Solutions ranged from applications for ensuring business expense receipts meet company compliance standards, to a language translator that eliminated the need for manual data entry and translation—saving time, reducing errors, and empowering teams to work faster, smarter, and more collaboratively—regardless of language or document format.
Developers also created an agentic AI assistant that simplified health insurance policies so users would no longer be surprised by denied claims or financial shock due to not understanding complex jargon or fine print. Students also participated by creating a unified document automation toolkit that simplified and accelerated document-heavy workflows. It analyzed various document types such as invoices, KYC, and contracts, then suggested the most suitable ABBYY model for processing.
If there are any doubts about the benefits of AI, you need to work with a partner that has your success as the benchmark for their success. ABBYY continues to be a champion for empowering customers to focus more on what matters most to them. Whether it’s improving compliance, delivering products to market faster, making chatbots smarter, or building a new solution in-house to solve a revenue driving business process, ABBYY has the solution to meet your needs.
By the way, there is still opportunity to attend ABBYY AI Summit Singapore on September 4, or ABBYY AI Summit for Financial Services in Boston on September 12. If we can’t see you IRL, subscribe to stay updated about our next virtual events and insights.