Despite the growing adoption of automation technologies, many businesses still struggle with fragmented processes, manual bottlenecks and underutilized artificial intelligence (AI) investments. In fact, organizations lose up to 25 percent of their revenue annually due to inefficient processes — highlighting the urgent need for smarter, AI-driven solutions.
To address these issues, Amelia Brand sat down with Jon Knisley, product marketing manager for Process AI at ABBYY at OPEX Week 2025. ABBYY is an intelligent automation organization specializing in AI-powered document processing, automation and data capture. Their intelligent document processing (IDP) technology extracts and transforms data from documents in any format or language, enabling smarter decision-making. Additionally, they provide process intelligence solutions that analyze and optimize business workflows using AI-driven process mining. With their two main product areas — process AI and document AI — they help businesses streamline operations, reduce manual work and drive digital transformation.
In this conversation, he shares his insights on the challenges businesses face with AI adoption, the importance of process intelligence in automation and how ABBYY is helping organizations unlock the full potential of their AI-driven transformation efforts.
PEX Network: What brings ABBYY to OPEX Week and what have been your goals for the event?
The first step is understanding existing processes — you can’t improve what you don’t measure. By leveraging advancements in AI, businesses can gain a clearer view of anticipated outcomes and compare them to actual results, ensuring continuous optimization. OPEX Week allows us to engage with individuals and organizations about this issue face-to-face.
PEX Network: Let’s dive into AI. How is ABBYY leveraging AI and automation to drive efficiency?
JK: ABBYY delivers what we call "purpose-driven AI," designed to tackle specific business problems. Unlike general AI models, our solutions are tailored to enterprise needs, making them more efficient and secure. Many AI initiatives struggle to progress beyond the pilot phase because companies lack a deep understanding of their own processes. They know what they do at a high level, but the execution details remain unclear. Process intelligence tools provide the insights needed to successfully integrate AI into operations.
PEX Network: You touched on advancements in AI earlier. What about ABBYY’s advancements?
JK: There’s enormous interest in generative AI, but we focus on combining multiple technologies for better outcomes. For instance, integrating traditional IDP with generative AI can significantly improve accuracy and efficiency. A great example is lease extraction for regulatory reporting. Businesses must analyze complex, unstructured commercial agreements, which can be 60-70 pages long. Traditional IDP alone provided limited accuracy, while LLMs (large language models) slightly improved results. However, combining both with ABBYY’s technology achieved accuracy rates in the high 80 percent range — far superior to any single solution!
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PEX Network: What about the challenges? With AI playing a huge role in automation, how does ABBYY ensure compliance and mitigate risks?
JK: Trust, governance and transparency are at the core of ABBYY’s AI philosophy. Over 100 countries are exploring AI regulations, making compliance more critical than ever. However, one of the biggest challenges isn’t technology — it’s change management. In the early days of digital transformation, around 80 percent of projects failed. Today, we’re seeing similar trends in AI because organizations often focus too much on technology and neglect the people and process aspects. Success requires a balanced approach, integrating technology with strong process management and workforce engagement.
PEX Network: What trends do you expect to see in intelligent automation this year?
JK: There’s growing interest in how generative AI and LLMs can enhance automation programs. These technologies extend automation’s value by addressing entire end-to-end processes rather than just isolated tasks. This shift will unlock greater efficiency and business impact.
However, some hesitate to adopt AI because it isn’t 100 percent accurate. But humans aren’t either. Last year, a major North American financial institution was fined $3 million for failing to prevent basic money laundering — a mistake well-trained employees shouldn’t make. The key is to combine AI with human oversight, implementing safeguards and maintaining human-in-the-loop interactions. This approach ensures accuracy while utilizing AI’s strengths.
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PEX Network: Where do you see ABBYY and AI-driven automation heading in the future?
JK: As businesses navigate the evolving AI landscape, ABBYY remains at the forefront of intelligent automation. By combining process intelligence, AI-driven automation and human expertise, ABBYY empowers organizations to optimize workflows, enhance compliance and achieve greater efficiency in an increasingly complex business environment.
PEX Network: Why do you think personally it’s important to attend events like OPEX week. What’s been the most valuable part for ABBYY?
JK: Hearing different use-cases across industries and across different parts of the business. Traditionally, a lot of automation, IDP and process intelligence work has been limited to the financial and accounting practices areas. The applicability of these technologies really crosses supply chain, customer experience, marketing and more! Having that breadth of conversations across different industries about how different parts of organizations are leveraging these technologies has been helpful.
PEX Network: How would you describe OPEX week to someone who’s never attended before?
JK: The nice thing about it is that you get a really broad range of people with an incredible range of experiences from the different companies that they work in. This is really the best place to bring it all together in one place, as opposed to having to travel to 10 different events over the course of a year.
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