ABBYY Event

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Date
Wednesday, May 6, 2026
Location
Brussels, The Hotel Brussels
Time
9:00 - 19:00 CET

Turning Complexity into Clarity

This year, enterprises are moving beyond experimentation with AI. Results now matter. At ABBYY Ascend Brussels, discover how purpose-built Document AI turns business-critical documents into trusted, actionable data — powering intelligent automation, informed decision-making, and next-generation AI use cases. Experience it through an immersive, in-person event designed to turn complexity into clarity. Connect with peers, spark innovation, and gain a solid foundation to lead your organization into the future of enterprise AI. 

Why You Should Attend?

Agenda

Registration and networking coffee

08:15 – 09:10

Welcome

The MC welcomes the audience and sets the stage for the day's insights.

Ulf Persson, Chief Executive Officer

09:10 – 09:30

Keynote: Intelligence That Works — Document AI in the Era of Agentic Automation

Enterprises are moving beyond generic AI toward solutions that deliver reliable, measurable results—especially in the document-heavy workflows that power their business. In this keynote, we introduce how ABBYY’s purpose-built Document AI models and domain-specific VLMs enable agents to read, interpret, and act on business-critical documents with accuracy and confidence. We will share the latest market trends, customer outcomes, and the rapidly growing need for standards-based, trustworthy extraction as the foundation for safe and scalable agentic automation. Attendees will see how high-quality document intelligence is transforming workflows across finance, operations, compliance, and customer experience, and why “intelligence that works” begins with getting your documents right.

Max Vermeir, Vice President, AI Strategy

09:30 – 10:15

Customer Spotlight: From Documents to Decisions: Transforming Business with Document AI

In this spotlight session, a flagship customer will share how they transformed a mission-critical workflow by applying high-quality document intelligence. You will hear how reliable data extraction and clear decision logic came together to streamline a previously complex, manual process—reducing turnaround times, lowering operational risk, and improving customer experience.

10:15 – 10:45

Award Ceremony: Customer of the Year & Partner Impact Awards

Following the case study, we will present two major awards. First, the Enterprise AI Impact Award, recognizing the organizations that have most successfully transformed document complexity into clarity, setting a new industry standard. Then, we’ll celebrate our ecosystem partners with the Partner Impact Awards, honoring the partners who drive customer success and enhance the value of ABBYY solutions.

Neil Murphy, Chief Revenue Officer
Bruce Orcutt, Chief Marketing Officer

10:45 - 11:00

Break

11:15 - 11:45

Business Track 1: The Hybrid Approach: Making GenAI Production-Ready

Generic LLMs promise flexibility but often fail on accuracy, predictability, and cost control in document-heavy workflows. In this session, we demonstrate how ABBYY’s hybrid approach—combining purpose-built Document AI with our GenAI portfolio —delivers fast wins and production-grade performance. Learn how zero-shot extraction, auto-labelling, improved user experience, and domain-specific optimization unlock measurable impact across finance, compliance, operations, and customer onboarding.

Slavena Hristova, Director of Product Marketing

11:45 - 12:30

Technical Track 1: Making LLM Document Extraction Work in Production

Go inside ABBYY’s Purpose-Built AI architecture and see how we combine domain-trained document models with foundational LLMs to minimize hallucinations, control token usage, and maximize extraction accuracy. This hands-on session walks through practical implementation patterns that make GenAI usable in real-world document workflows.

Katalin Fazekas, Director, Pre and Post Sales

11:45 - 12:30

Lunch

12:30 – 13:45

Ascend Central Expo

13:00 - 13:45

Business Track 2: Setting the Standard for Safe, Scalable AI

AI adoption without standards increases enterprise risk. In this session, learn how ABBYY is shaping the standard to define how LLMs extract, structure, and validate business-critical documents. Discover how standardized document intelligence reduces compliance risk, ensures consistency across systems, and enables scalable AI governance.

Jonathan Knisley, Product Marketing Manager, Process AI

13:45 – 14:30

Technical Track 2: Standardizing Document Structures for Enterprise AI

Today’s document data formats are fragmented—XML, JSON, hOCR, ALTO—creating integration complexity. This session introduces a new standard for document extraction co-created by ABBYY. Learn how it unifies document structure representation, simplifies downstream integrations, and provides a stable backbone for enterprise-grade AI systems.

Max Vermeir, Vice President, AI Strategy
Alina Sysko, Solution Architect

13:45 – 14:30

Business Track 3: From AI Experiments to Enterprise-Grade Agentic Automation

Agentic automation promises transformation — but without governance, trusted data, and orchestration, it remains a pilot. In this session, we'll show how enterprises move from isolated GenAI use cases to fully orchestrated, business-critical workflows. You’ll learn how: Trusted document intelligence provides decision-ready data for agents. An orchestration layer governs how agents act across systems. Enterprises maintain transparency, compliance, and human oversight. Business leaders measure and scale ROI across claims, onboarding, KYC, finance, and logistics. This session is for business leaders who want to operationalize AI safely — not just experiment with it.

Marlene Wolfgruber, Product Marketing Lead, AI

14:30–15:15

Technical Track 3: FineReader Engine in Containers: Built for Scale

See how to operationalize ABBYY’s Document AI platform at scale using containerized deployments such as Docker. ABBYY engineers will walk through workflow orchestration—from ingestion and extraction to routing and task completion—showing how to build a scalable, high-availability architecture that supports intelligent agents and enterprise automation systems.

Dallas James, Product Manager

14:30 – 15:15

Break

15:15 - 15:30

Award Ceremony: Hackathon

A high-energy closing session highlighting the future of automation, featuring live demos from ABBYY Ascend Hackathon Excellence Award that showcase innovative Document AI solutions built by the developer community.

15:30 – 15:45

Closing Remarks

Ulf Persson, Chief Executive Officer

15:45 - 16:00

Ascend Central Reception

The event transitions into a networking reception at Ascend Central, allowing attendees to connect with experts and peers.

16:00 – 19:00

Meet Our Speakers

ulf-persson_white-background

Ulf Persson

Chief Executive Officer

maxime-vermeir_white-background

Max Vermeir

Vice President, AI Strategy

Marlene-Wolfgruber_white-background

Marlene Wolfgruber

Product Marketing Lead, AI

Slavena-Hristova_white-background

Slavena Hristova

Director of Product Marketing

Jonathan-Knisley

Jonathan Knisley

Product Marketing Manager, Process AI

Dallas-James

Dallas James

Product Manager

Katalin Fazekas

Katalin Fazekas

Director, Pre and Post Sales

Alina Sysko

Alina Sysko

Solution Architect

If you are an ABBYY partner or know a partner who may be interested, please do not register on this page. Please contact us / your ABBYY Partner Account Manager for more information.

Register your interest