4 days ago
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Updated: 7 hours ago

The new path to AI-powered business productivity.

Distilling data can be daunting.

In a world where we’re inundated with information, distilling the data we need has become increasingly challenging. Whether it’s stagnating in unread documents or poorly designed presentations or scattered across multiple websites, processing information can be a daunting task for anyone.

Regardless of what your business sells — legal advice, financial services, or frying pans — there are two things you must do to stay competitive: comprehend information and then create something new with it that gives your teams or customers what they need to make educated decisions quickly and effectively.

Gartner estimates that 80%–90% of enterprise data is unstructured, and IDC reports that only about 10% of all data is stored — with even less ever analyzed.

Source: Research World

That information might come from a spreadsheet, a contract, a clinical study, or an earnings report. It might come in a document spanning hundreds of pages or be buried in a jumble of files across a variety of formats. And the new collateral you need to create from it?

Whether it’s a strategy memo, a presentation, a licensing agreement, an ad, or a social post, you’ll need to create it rapidly and accurately.

All of which boils down to this: Comprehension and creation are at the core of knowledge work for every business, no matter if you’re a data analyst, a marketer, or an attorney. Your job is to grasp the essentials and discover fresh insights from your sources. If you can’t quickly comprehend information, you might struggle to keep up. And if you can’t create something new that’s effective and clear, moving ahead becomes challenging.

The evolution from

supportive to strategic.

Until recently, documents were the end product of the work cycle — something you sent off when decisions were finalized. But in our era of AI, as document-originated work has gone from static and manual to dynamic and interactive, document workflows drive how work gets done by allowing teams to collaborate and make decisions in real time throughout the process.

What’s making this shift viable is that AI has evolved from being just a tool to source or summarize documents into a solution that permeates the entire workflow, helping teams have a more conversational relationship with documents and with each other as they work.

It’s all part of a bigger shift: According to a Business Research Company 2026 report, the global AI software market is projected to grow 30% annually from 2026 to 2035 to reach $919 billion. And McKinsey reports that 88% of organizations are using AI in at least one business function. The result is that businesses are changing the way they think about productivity as they move from focusing purely on speed to how they can be more strategic and efficient. Meanwhile, AI is moving from a handy novelty to a “must have” if businesses want to stay competitive.

88%

of orgs now use AI in at least one business function.

Source: McKinsey

Consolidation and control.

But embracing new tools and adopting new workflows brings new complications. IT teams are tasked not only with integrating these tools into existing infrastructure but also

with managing licenses, access, ROI, and security.

Evaluating the requirements of the overall business, along

with the many teams within it, means that choosing which tools to acquire is a balancing act. As you begin to dissect the needs of knowledge workers, you uncover a complex sequence of tasks. And those tasks are both much the same and also different enough that you could quickly make a case for bringing numerous new tools to an organization to fill a variety of needs.

Here’s an example: Legal teams need to work through lengthy documents, bring in different stakeholders, and create new contracts. Their needs differ from marketing teams who need to compare many competitors’ offerings, create content, produce event collateral, and run ads and multimedia social posts. But, for any given team, all the content they produce needs to represent the brand.

Given the choice between sourcing several AI tools and the headaches that accompany implementation, organizations are opting to consolidate their toolsets. Instead of stitching together multiple apps for document summarizing, editing, collaboration, and content creation, they’re looking for unified platforms that do it all and reduce costs and friction, improve adoption, and help teams stay focused. The trend is clear: Fewer tools mean better flow for faster alignment, consistent execution, and creative outcomes that scale.

79% of leaders agree their company must adopt AI to stay competitive, but 59% worry about quantifying productivity gains, pushing IT to implement monitoring and measurement.

Source: Microsoft

Despite technological advances,

we still spend between 1–3 hours

a day searching for information.

Source: Drucker Forum

Where comprehension meets creation.

As you consider the needs of your teams, a clearer picture emerges. Comprehension, collaboration, creation, and control are the pillars of the modern knowledge worker’s process. And an integrated product that does it all will boost productivity

and reduce friction across your entire business.

From the beginning, Adobe’s goal has been to create tools that bring those parts of the process together. As Adobe co-founder Dr. John Warnock said, “Acrobat technology

liberates information and the flow of ideas.

When we liberate information, we get unstuck, creative productivity flows, and

invention leads to new value.”

The new Adobe Acrobat Studio is designed

as a generative productivity platform. It anchors your workflow in trusted documents, then uses AI to help you extract insights and create new outputs — from strategy decks to decision memos to public-facing content — all in one secure place, where comprehension meets creation.

An end-to-end productivity suite.

In fact, Adobe was recently recognized as one of the most innovative companies in applied AI for 2026 by Fast Company.

According to them:

“The PDF was designed to preserve information. Today, Adobe is using it to enable conversation. The company’s Acrobat Studio blends Acrobat document intelligence with Adobe Express creative tools to turn static files into interactive

workspaces. At its core are AI-powered PDF Spaces, where users can upload documents, assign AI assistants roles such

as ‘Analyst’ or ‘Instructor,’ and query collections of files with source-linked citations. Instead of copying text into separate apps, teams can compare versions, extract insights, and instantly transform findings into additional content — all within the same environment.”

Consider these use cases:

Legal

Review, analyze, and manage complex contracts and regulatory documents with greater speed and confidence while maintaining control, audit readiness, and compliance.
Reduce risk and rework by centralizing document understanding, collaboration, and downstream communication in a secure, governable workflow.

Finance

Reduce time spent reconciling numbers and validating assumptions by keeping financial documents, analysis, and revisions connected across review cycles.
Improve clarity and alignment by turning complex financial information into clear, reviewable outputs for executives and cross-functional partners.

Human Resources

Help HR teams keep pace with growing onboarding and training demands by reducing time spent updating, distributing, and tracking critical documents.
Ensure employees and managers get clear, consistent information while maintaining compliance and audit readiness.

Sales

Accelerate deal velocity and win rates by allowing sales teams to quickly understand, tailor, and deliver customer-facing materials without version chaos or delays.
Improve collaboration and visibility across contracts, redlines, and approvals to shorten sales cycles and reduce costly rework.

Marketing

Scale the creation of self-serve, on-brand content across business units with built-in guardrails — permitting content reuse across formats and channels for every timely moment, from events and campaigns to launches and enablement.
Increase content impact and speed to market by keeping collaboration and approvals aligned, reducing rework and late-stage fixes.

A transformative workflow for everyone.

At a time when businesses need to work faster, the solution isn’t to introduce more tools. Rather, it’s to create a frictionless environment in which everyone who needs to access information or assets can do so in an organized, intelligent, and secure way. AI in itself doesn’t bring people and ideas together — but a unified platform powered by AI that’s designed to facilitate comprehension and creation, while giving businesses the ability to collaborate more efficiently, does.

Acrobat Studio is designed to let professionals of all kinds explore ideas, ask meaningful questions, and make the subsequent content they create easier to share and absorb. Empowering business professionals to generate new knowledge, new recommendations, and new decisions — and then present them brilliantly and beautifully — now happens in one place.

Explore how Adobe Acrobat Studio can help you transform your workflow to better meet your unique needs.

Sources

The Business Research Company, “Artificial Intelligence Market Report 2026,” 2026.

Isabella Mader, “The Productivity Paradox of 21st Century Knowledge Work,” The Global Peter Drucker Forum, 2026.

Mark Sullivan and Victor Dey, “The Most Innovative Companies in Applied AI for 2026,” Fast Company, 2026.

Microsoft, “Measuring AI Impact in the Workplace: A Leader’s Guide,” 2024.

QuantumBlack AI, “The State of AI in 2025: Agents, Innovation, and Transformation,” McKinsey, 2025.

Robert Heeg, “Possibilities and Limitations, of Unstructured Data,” Research World, 2023.

Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, and Adobe Express are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.