The verdict in three sentences
An internal AI assistant connected to your knowledge base costs 35,000 to 90,000 EUR excl. VAT for an 800-employee company, then 2 to 6 EUR per user per month in usage. Built on RAG (search your documents, then answer with sources), it respects existing access rights and stays hosted in the European Union. With 25 minutes saved per day per active employee, the investment pays back within months, provided adoption is handled properly.
The hidden cost of scattered documentation
The CIO knows the picture: quality procedures in SharePoint, HR notes in Google Drive, 12,000 PDF technical sheets on a file server, and an internal search engine nobody uses. Employees ask the colleague next to them, who also loses time.
| Situation (800 employees, 500 active users) | Without assistant | With RAG assistant |
|---|---|---|
| Document search time per day | 45 min | 20 min |
| Questions to HR and quality support per month | 1,400 | 600 |
| Time to find the right procedure version | 10 to 30 min | Under 1 min, source cited |
| New hire onboarding (days of support) | 8 days | 5 days |
| Hours lost per year (220 days) | 82,500 h | 36,700 h |
| Value of time recovered (45 EUR per loaded hour) | 2.06 M EUR per year |
2026 order of magnitude. Even if you keep only a quarter of this theoretical gain, the annual value exceeds 500,000 EUR.
Off-the-shelf licences or custom deployment
Assistants built into office suites are quick to switch on but only cover their own ecosystem and charge per seat. A custom deployment indexes all your sources and charges only for actual usage.
| Criterion | Off-the-shelf assistant licence | Custom RAG assistant |
|---|---|---|
| Entry cost | 0 to 10,000 EUR setup | 35,000 to 90,000 EUR excl. VAT |
| Recurring cost for 800 employees | 25 to 30 EUR per seat per month, i.e. 240,000 to 288,000 EUR a year | 2 to 6 EUR per active user per month, i.e. 12,000 to 36,000 EUR a year |
| Sources covered | Mostly the vendor's ecosystem | SharePoint, Drive, file servers, ERP, wiki |
| Access rights respected | Yes, within the ecosystem | Yes, synced with the directory (Entra ID, Google) |
| Hosting | Per vendor contract | EU, your choice of model and cloud |
| Customisation (business vocabulary, formats) | Limited | Full |
| Time to go live | 2 to 4 weeks | 3 months |
Over three years, per-seat licences come to 720,000 EUR or more for 800 people, against 120,000 to 200,000 EUR for custom. Custom does, however, require a real project and an internal owner.
Security and adoption: the two conditions for success
On security, three requirements are non-negotiable. The assistant must never show an excerpt from a document the user is not allowed to open: permissions are checked on every query. Data stays in the EU, with a contract excluding model training on your content. Finally, every answer cites its sources, so users can verify and flag outdated documents.
On adoption, the classic mistake is a company-wide launch with no support. Better to start with two pilot departments (quality and HR, for example), measure weekly usage, clean up the duplicates users report, then expand. A realistic target: 60% weekly active users at 6 months.
Mini case study
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Thomas, CIO of an 800-employee industrial company in Amsterdam, deploys a RAG assistant for 68,000 EUR excl. VAT and pays 18,000 EUR a year in usage and hosting for 500 active users. He uses a cautious assumption of 10 minutes saved per day instead of 25: 500 x 10 min x 220 days, or 18,300 hours, valued at 45 EUR, gives 825,000 EUR of recovered time. Even divided by four to reflect time actually reinvested, the gain covers the investment in under 5 months.
FAQ
How much does an internal AI assistant cost for a mid-sized company?
Between 35,000 and 90,000 EUR excl. VAT to set up, depending on the number of sources and integration depth. Usage then costs 2 to 6 EUR per active user per month.
Can the assistant leak confidential documents?
Not if it is well designed: it filters results by the user's directory rights before generating anything. An audit of 20 to 30 trap queries is part of acceptance testing.
Where is the data hosted?
In the European Union, on the cloud of your choice, with a language model offered in an EU region. Content is never used to train the model.
What happens when a document is outdated?
The assistant cites its source and last modified date, which makes obsolescence visible. A flag button sends the document to its owner, and 5 to 10% of the base is usually cleaned up in the first three months.
How long does deployment take?
Three months: four weeks of inventory and connectors, five weeks of development, three weeks of pilot with two departments.
Let's scope your project. List your document sources and target number of users: we price an assistant between 35,000 and 90,000 EUR excl. VAT, in production in 3 months. 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.
