The verdict in three sentences
An internal AI assistant connected to your documents (a RAG architecture, retrieval-augmented generation) answers in seconds questions that currently take hours: which quality procedure applies, what the supplier contract amendment says, what the expense policy allows. For a company with 200 to 1,000 employees in Germany, budget €20,000 to €60,000 to build and €200 to €2,000 a month to run. The decisive factor is handling access rights per department, not the choice of language model.
What searching for information really costs
Productivity studies agree: an office worker spends 15 to 20% of their time looking for or rebuilding information. In an industrial or services company in Berlin, documents are spread across SharePoint, a file server, the ERP, the quality management system and mailboxes.
| Profile (500 employees) | Staff concerned | Time lost per week | Loaded hourly cost | Annual cost (45 weeks) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operations and quality | 60 | 5 h | €45 | €607,500 |
| Procurement and legal | 15 | 4 h | €60 | €162,000 |
| Customer service and sales admin | 40 | 4 h | €38 | €273,600 |
| HR and payroll | 12 | 3 h | €43 | €69,660 |
| Sales reps | 35 | 3 h | €55 | €259,875 |
| Total | 162 | €1,372,635 |
A RAG assistant does not remove all of that time, but recovering 30 to 40% of those hours is already worth several hundred thousand euros a year. That order of magnitude is what justifies the investment.
Three project levels and their 2026 prices
| Level | Scope | Build cost | Monthly cost (API + hosting) | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pilot | 1 department, 2,000 to 5,000 documents, 1 source (SharePoint) | €20,000 to €28,000 | €200 to €500 | 6 to 8 weeks |
| Standard | 3 to 5 departments, 20,000 documents, 3 sources, group rights | €30,000 to €45,000 | €500 to €1,200 | 8 to 10 weeks |
| Advanced | Whole company, 100,000+ documents, ERP, citations, audit | €48,000 to €60,000 | €1,200 to €2,000 | 10 to 12 weeks |
| Generic licence such as Microsoft 365 Copilot | Generic tool, no dedicated pipeline | €0 | about €28 per user | 1 to 2 weeks |
The generic licence looks cheaper, but for 160 users it comes to about €4,500 a month, with no fine control over sources, citations or answer quality on your business procedures. A custom build keeps control over indexing, document chunking, language (German and English) and model choice (Mistral, Claude, GPT or a self-hosted open source model).
Access rights, GDPR and the AI Act: the non-negotiables
The main risk of an internal assistant is simple: a technician retrieves an excerpt from the executive board's compensation file. The fix is to mirror the source system's permissions at query time, document by document.
| Requirement | What to plan for | Budget impact |
|---|---|---|
| Rights per department | Results filtered by Active Directory or Entra ID groups | €3,500 to €7,000 |
| EU hosting | Model and vector database hosted in Germany or the EU | +10 to 20% on monthly cost |
| GDPR | Record of processing, DPIA if HR data, conversation retention period | €2,000 to €5,000 (DPO support) |
| AI Act | Limited-risk system: transparency duty, employee information | included in scoping |
| Traceability | Source citations and query log | €2,500 to €6,000 |
| Works council (Betriebsrat) | Co-determination agreement, as the tool can log usage | €1,500 to €4,000 legal support |
The AI Act applies progressively in 2026: an internal document assistant usually falls under limited risk, with a duty to tell users clearly they are interacting with AI. If it is used to evaluate employees it becomes high-risk, which scoping should rule out. In Germany, the works council must be involved early, since any tool able to monitor behaviour requires its agreement.
Mini case study
Jonas, COO of a 480-employee company in Berlin, launches a Standard-level assistant for quality, customer service and procurement, 115 users in total. Budget: €38,000 to build and €900 a month.
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- Time lost measured before the project: 4.4 hours per week per user on average.
- After three months, the assistant saves 1.5 hours per week per user, measured by survey and usage logs.
- Annual gain: 115 × 1.5 h × 45 weeks × €43 = €333,800.
- First-year cost: 38,000 + 10,800 = €48,800.
Payback comes in just under two months of effective use. Jonas then extends the tool to HR for an additional €9,500.
FAQ
Are our documents sent to OpenAI or another third party?
Only if you choose so. You can use an EU-hosted model with a no-training commitment, or an open source model on your own servers, for an extra €300 to €1,500 a month.
What answer quality should we expect?
On a clean corpus, 85 to 92% of answers are rated correct and sourced after tuning. Outdated or duplicate documents are the first cause of errors, so plan 1 to 2 weeks of clean-up at the start.
How long does a pilot take?
Allow 6 to 8 weeks for one department and one document source, enough to measure the real gain before committing €30,000 or more to a full rollout.
Do we need an in-house AI team?
No. One business owner per department, 2 to 3 hours a week during the project, is enough. Maintenance (index updates, cost monitoring) is included in the monthly fee.
What if API prices go up?
The architecture lets you switch models without rebuilding. In 2026 the cost per question is between €0.002 and €0.02, and it falls by about 30% a year.
Let's scope your project. Tell us your document sources, user count and priority departments, and we will price a pilot or full rollout between €20,000 and €60,000, delivered in 8 to 12 weeks. Detailed quote within 48 h. WhatsApp +221 77 596 93 33.
Mohamed Bah
Fondateur, Kolonell
Passionate about digital and entrepreneurship in Africa, Mohamed has been helping Sénégalese businesses with their digital transformation since 2020. Founder of Kolonell, he believes every SME deserves a professional and accessible online présence.
