The verdict in three sentences
For a group of 1,200 employees in Singapore, an internal RAG chatbot connected to SharePoint costs USD 25,000 to USD 60,000 to build and USD 350 to USD 1,400 a month to run. The target gain, 25 minutes per day per employee spent less searching for procedures, far exceeds that cost once a few hundred people use it. The difference between a gadget and an adopted tool comes down to access rights enforced document by document and source citation in every answer.
Why RAG rather than a generic ChatGPT
A consumer assistant does not know your procedures, and pasting internal documents into it raises confidentiality issues. RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) indexes your documents, retrieves the relevant passages and has the model write the answer from those extracts only, with a link to the source.
| Criterion (2026 estimate) | Consumer AI | Copilot in Microsoft 365 | Custom RAG |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | USD 20 to USD 30 / user / month | about USD 30 / user / month | USD 25,000 to USD 60,000 + usage |
| Monthly cost for 1,200 staff | not suitable | about USD 36,000 | USD 350 to USD 1,400 |
| Knowledge of internal procedures | no | partial, depends on indexing | full, curated sources |
| SharePoint permissions respected | no | yes | yes, controlled |
| Source citation | no | partial | systematic |
| Data hosting | outside your control | Microsoft cloud | server of your choice, Singapore region |
| Business customisation | low | low | high (HR, procurement, quality) |
At 1,200 users, per-seat licensing quickly costs more than the custom project, which is billed by question volume rather than headcount.
Breakdown of a RAG budget
| Component | Content | 2026 range |
|---|---|---|
| Scoping and document audit | SharePoint inventory, duplicates, outdated versions | USD 3,500 to USD 7,000 |
| SharePoint connector and indexing | Incremental sync, OCR on scanned PDFs | USD 6,000 to USD 14,000 |
| Access rights management | Azure AD group filtering on every query | USD 4,000 to USD 10,000 |
| Interface | Teams, web intranet, mobile app | USD 5,000 to USD 14,000 |
| Evaluation and tuning | 200 test questions, accuracy measurement | USD 3,500 to USD 8,500 |
| PDPA compliance and security | Data protection notice, logging, encryption | USD 3,000 to USD 6,500 |
| Monthly usage (model + hosting) | 15,000 to 60,000 questions a month | USD 350 to USD 1,400 |
Singapore's PDPA applies when documents contain employees' personal data, for example named HR procedures. Hosting in a Singapore cloud region or a governed overseas transfer must be decided at scoping.
What makes the project succeed
The main risk is not technical: it is a messy document base. Three versions of the same procedure give three contradictory answers. Prior clean-up, often 15 to 25% of the budget, drives quality. Then each domain (HR, procurement, quality, IT) needs an owner who validates pilot answers. Finally, launch with 200 users for 6 weeks, measure the share of answers rated useful, aim for over 80%, then expand.
Mini case study
Wei Ling, CIO of an industrial group with 1,200 employees in Singapore, finds that teams spend an average of 40 minutes a day looking for procedures. She launches a RAG chatbot for USD 44,000 with USD 1,000 a month in usage.
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- Regular users after 6 months: 500 employees.
- Time saved: 25 min x 500 x 21 days = 4,375 hours a month.
- Value at an average loaded hourly cost of USD 35: USD 153,000 a month, of which she conservatively counts one third, USD 51,000, as truly redeployed.
- Payback: 44,000 / (51,000 - 1,000), so under one month of conservative gain.
FAQ
Can the chatbot show a document to someone without access?
No, as long as rights filtering is applied on every query. That component, USD 4,000 to USD 10,000, is the one never to cut.
How long for a first pilot?
Allow 6 to 8 weeks for a 200-user pilot on 2 or 3 domains. Full rollout takes 3 to 5 months.
Does our data go to OpenAI or Anthropic?
Only the necessary extracts reach the model, through APIs that do not train on your data. An open-source model hosted in Singapore is possible, at USD 1,400 to USD 3,500 a month in servers.
Does the chatbot answer in several languages?
Yes, 2026 models handle English, Mandarin, Malay and French. Plan 10 to 15% extra evaluation budget to test each language.
What happens when a procedure changes?
Incremental indexing picks up the modified document within an hour. Old versions are excluded automatically once archived in SharePoint.
Let's scope your project. Tell us your headcount, document sources and hosting constraints: we will price a RAG chatbot between USD 25,000 and USD 60,000, with a pilot delivered in 6 to 8 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.
