The verdict in three sentences
A RAG assistant (retrieval-augmented generation) connected to the SharePoint of an 80-consultant New York firm costs 40,000 to 100,000 USD in 2026, with 400 to 1,500 USD a month in model and hosting costs. The non-negotiable point is access control enforcement: a consultant must never get an answer drawn from a client file they cannot open. With 3 hours of search time lost per person per week, the project pays back in 2 to 4 months even with partial gains.
What document search costs today
In a consulting firm, the value sits in past work: proposals, diagnostics, financial models, sector notes. They sleep in thousands of poorly named SharePoint and Teams folders. A consultant billed at 2,000 to 3,500 USD a day who spends 3 hours a week searching represents a major capacity loss.
| Indicator (2026 order of magnitude) | Without assistant | With RAG assistant |
|---|---|---|
| Search time per consultant per week | 3 h | 0.8 to 1.2 h |
| Internal cost of a consultant hour | 150 to 220 USD | 150 to 220 USD |
| Annual search cost for 80 consultants | 1.6 to 2.4 million USD | 0.43 to 0.95 million USD |
| Time to produce a proposal | 3 to 5 days | 1.5 to 3 days |
| Reuse of existing deliverables | low, depends on tenure | systematic, sources cited |
| Cross-client leakage risk | manual control | SharePoint permissions applied on every query |
Even assuming a gain of just one hour per consultant per week, savings exceed 600,000 USD a year for an initial investment capped at 100,000 USD.
What a serious RAG project includes
Price depends on document volume, number of sources and security requirements. A 10,000 USD prototype that ignores permissions cannot be deployed in a firm bound by client confidentiality. New York rates explain the gap with European projects (15,000 to 35,000 EUR in Paris).
| Building block | 2026 range (USD) | Lead time |
|---|---|---|
| Scoping, use cases, data policy | 5,000 to 10,000 | 1 week |
| SharePoint and Teams connector with incremental sync | 7,000 to 16,000 | 1 to 2 weeks |
| Chunking, vector indexing, metadata (client, sector, date) | 8,000 to 20,000 | 2 weeks |
| Entra ID permission filtering on every query | 7,000 to 18,000 | 1 to 2 weeks |
| Interface (Teams or web) with source citations | 6,000 to 18,000 | 1 to 2 weeks |
| Quality evaluation on 200 real questions, audit logging | 7,000 to 18,000 | 1 week |
| Total project | 40,000 to 100,000 | 6 to 10 weeks |
Recurring costs depend on usage: 80 consultants at 15 queries a day is about 25,000 queries a month. With a model hosted in a controlled region (Azure OpenAI, Anthropic via AWS Bedrock or Google Cloud), expect 400 to 1,500 USD a month including the vector database and hosting.
Privacy, AI regulation and client confidentiality
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Three constraints frame the project in 2026. US state privacy laws (New York SHIELD Act, California CCPA for clients there) require reasonable safeguards and breach procedures. If the firm serves EU clients, GDPR and the EU AI Act apply to their data: transparency (users know they are querying an AI) and AI literacy training. Client confidentiality finally requires a contract banning any reuse of data for model training, query logging and index deletion on request. Many clients now ask about this in RFP security questionnaires.
Mini case study
Thomas, COO of an 80-consultant consulting firm in New York, launches a RAG assistant at 70,000 USD, with 1,000 USD a month in recurring costs. Conservative assumption: 1.5 hours saved per consultant per week, over 45 weeks, at 180 USD internal hourly cost. Annual gain: 80 x 1.5 x 45 x 180 = 972,000 USD of freed capacity. Total first-year cost: 70,000 + 12,000 = 82,000 USD. Even if only half that time is rebilled, payback comes in under 2 months.
FAQ
Can the assistant make up answers? The risk exists, but a well-built RAG only answers from retrieved documents and cites its sources. On our 200-question evaluation sets, the rate of unsourced answers drops below 3 % after tuning.
Do we need to clean up SharePoint first? Not entirely. We exclude obsolete or personal folders by rule, which usually cuts the corpus by 30 to 50 %. A full archive project is not a prerequisite.
Could we just use Microsoft 365 Copilot? Copilot costs about 30 USD per user per month, or 28,800 USD a year for 80 people, without fine control over the corpus and answers. A custom RAG becomes more cost-effective from year two and adapts to the firm's own metadata.
Where is the data stored? In a US cloud region of your choice, or EU for European clients, with encryption at rest and in transit. No document leaves the agreed region.
How many documents can be indexed? An 80-consultant firm typically holds 200,000 to 800,000 files. Initial indexing takes 1 to 3 days, then incremental sync runs every hour.
Let's scope your project. Tell us your document sources, user count and confidentiality constraints, and we will price a RAG assistant between 40,000 and 100,000 USD delivered in 6 to 10 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.
