ABBYY Ascend highlights user excellence to define data process blueprints
Document AI was on full show this year at ABBYY Ascend 2026, held in Nashville this April.
ABBYY (hereafter Abbyy) used its annual data science, developer and tech project team leadership summit to further explain how its approach to Document AI transforms business-critical documents into trusted, actionable data powering intelligent automation, informed decision-making and next-generation AI use cases.
To expound and explain further, Abbyy Document AI is a suite of intelligent capture and processing tools that use machine learning and OCR to automatically extract, classify and understand data from complex, unstructured documents.
This is not OCR, this is Document AI.
Outstanding tech & business ability
Given the technical complexity of the work being undertaken here, the company uses a significant portion of its event to celebrate and, above all, to recognise those within its user base who have shown outstanding technical and business-centric ability with the technologies on offer.
It is, if you will, an opportunity to define blueprints from user stories that have shown exceptional efficiency, insight and results. These are the organisations and teams that have used Abbyy’s platform to transform business-critical documents into business insights that drive operational efficiency, enhance workforce productivity and elevate customer experiences.
Let’s move on to use case excellence.
Use case excellence
Abbyy’s customer excellence award this year went to Brian Bas, sr. manager, technical product management at Synergy ECM.
Jack Henry was also recognised with a customer excellence award during the event. Jack Henry is a major financial technology (fintech) company that provides technology solutions, software and payment processing services primarily to community banks, regional banks, and credit unions.
Abbyy provides intelligent document processing (IDP), OCR and process automation solutions that are embedded into financial workflows (account onboarding / Know Your Customer- KYC).
The company uses the ABBYY FineReader Engine in its KYC processes to extract data from forms for downstream processing on accounts for rural banks and credit unions
123 of MVPs
Abbyy also recognised the following partners and Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) who were in attendance in Nashville for their notable projects:
◦ Morgan Conque – Partner award winner from Ashling.
◦ Jamal Hashim – Partner awards winner from Intellera.
◦ Cam Collins – MVP and Partner award winner from Naviant.
◦ Mark Miller – MVP and Partner Award Winner from Naviant
◦ Travis Spangler – Ascend Hackathon Winner, MVP and Partner Award Winner from Naviant
NOTE: Mr Spangler also (obviously) wins the award for Best Surname In The Intelligent Document Processing Sales & Strategy Marketplace 2026.
Hackathon heroes & heroines
After the success and popularity of Abbyy’s hackathon held during past developer conferences, the company held its first hackathon in North America at ABBYY Ascend Nashville. The winner this year was Ilya Evdokimov, MVP from WiseTrend.
Overall, what should software engineering and data science professionals think about customer excellence awards? Well, yes, there’s an element of backslapping and handshaking and cheesy smiles on stage, but that’s actually all part of the fulfilment and enjoyment factor for most of the techies and business managers who receive industry plaudits this way. Ultimately, they’ll tell all their contacts and friends… plus, it’s for sure that they’ll also put their award on their CV or resume…
… and anyway, who doesn’t love a bent piece of glass with their name etched onto it, right?
