Buyer guide
Building an AI assistant on your company documents: what to know
Updated 2026-10-22
Short answer: These assistants (often called RAG, retrieval-augmented generation) find the relevant parts of your documents and use an AI model to write an answer, ideally with a link to the source. They work best on well-organised, up-to-date documents and need clear access rules.
How it works, simply
- Your documents are split into small pieces and indexed.
- When someone asks a question, the most relevant pieces are found.
- The AI writes an answer from those pieces and shows where it came from.
Keeping it safe
- People should only get answers from documents they are allowed to see.
- Keep a log of questions and answers.
- Agree on what the assistant must not answer.
- For risk guidance, the NIST AI Risk Management Framework is a useful free reference.
Costs
Build cost depends on the number of document sources and the access rules. Running cost is mostly AI usage, which providers price per amount of text; see the OpenAI and Anthropic pricing pages.
Agencies to look at
- Automation Consulting Services (United States)
- Atomic Actions (United States)
- Goodspeed (United Kingdom)
- Makeitfuture (Romania)
- Connex Digital (United States)
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Questions
Will it make things up?
It can. Showing sources with every answer and testing on real questions before launch reduces this a lot.
Can it work with SharePoint or Google Drive?
Yes, most agencies connect to common document stores. Ask how permissions are carried over.
Sources
Vendor prices change. Check the source page for current figures. Ranges marked "rough" are guidance from how agencies describe their work, not survey results.