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A branch manager's first review of results
Short answer
An AI knowledge base guides a new branch manager through preparing the first results review: it points to the passage of the handbook, explains company terms and helps collect the questions the documents do not answer. At Syntalith an AI app on company documents costs from €3,000 net. At 200 questions a month with 15 minutes of searching each, it pays back in 2.0 months.
How we workDetails ↓
- 01Call30 minutes with an engineer, free
- 02PrototypeA working system on your process and data, free
- 03ImplementationTarget and fixed price in the contract; 50% at signing
- 04Acceptance50% once the agreed target is met
- net per application, fixed price before contract
- from €3,000
- from signing the contract to acceptance
- 4–10 weeks
- free prototype on your documents
- €0
We belong to the OpenAI and Anthropic partner programmes and learn through their official courses. What this means ↓
Author: Syntalith · 3 min read
Statistics
AI knowledge bases: statistics 2026
2.0 mo.
payback of a €3,000 app at 200 questions a month: €1,745 of searching today, €265 with the app. Scenario.
20.0%
According to Eurostat (2025), 20.0% of EU companies with at least 10 employees used AI.
Source: Eurostat, 20% of EU enterprises use AI technologies (2025) ↗
30%
According to Brynjolfsson, Li and Raymond (2025), less experienced support agents working with AI resolved 30% more issues an hour.
Source: Brynjolfsson, Li and Raymond, The Quarterly Journal of Economics (2025) ↗
49%
According to Anthropic (2024), combining contextual embeddings with BM25 search cut failed retrievals by 49%, and by 67% with reranking.
48%
According to the European Commission (2026), 48% of EU SMEs and mid-caps name a lack of expertise as a barrier to AI.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer 578 (2026) ↗
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
Preparation starts before the meeting
The onboarding plan includes a commentary on the branch's monthly results. The reporting handbook explains which report to use and how to describe differences against the plan. The manager asks: „What do I need to prepare for the first review?”. The answer takes them from reading the handbook to collecting the data and writing the commentary, with a link at every step.
- 01ReadingThe passage of the handbook on the report and on describing differences.
- 02TermsA follow-up question about an abbreviation or a term from the previous answer.
- 03DataCollecting the data from the right report.
- 04CommentaryA draft of the commentary, which the manager writes themselves.
- 05QuestionsA list of doubts for the mentor.
Assessing the commentary and discussing the results stay with the line manager. The person responsible for reporting checks new explanations before they are added to the shared material, and updates them when the handbook changes.
What an onboarding knowledge base costs and when it pays back
- Today
- 200 questions × 15 min = 50 h (€1,745)
- With the system, a person checks the output in 15% of the time
- €262
- Model, 1 call per case, Claude Sonnet 5.5
- €2.98
- Cost of one case
- €8.72 today, €1.32 with the system
- Saving
- €1,480 a month
Payback of €3,000
2.0 months
The volume, the time and the checking share are the scenario's assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat. Model: 6,000 input tokens and 500 output tokens per call at Anthropic's rates, converted at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
The model is a small item here. The result depends on the time that searching and asking around take today, and on how much of it is left for checking the answer. According to Brynjolfsson, Li and Raymond (2025), less experienced workers with AI resolved 30% more issues an hour, so the biggest gain shows for people new to the role.
Before we quote a build, we run a test on 20 to 100 questions the team has already asked: we compare the app's answer with what an employee found by hand and measure the time from the question to the source. The test takes 5 working days and costs €0.
Would an onboarding page be enough?
With a short plan and well-described tasks, start with a shared page of material. The SharePoint new employee onboarding template provides a task list, information to get started, the organisation's structure and links to help. An app makes sense when new managers come back with questions that join several documents, and the mentor explains the same terms every time.
A short plan, well-described tasks
an onboarding page in SharePoint
no new app
Questions join the handbook, the glossary and the reports
an AI app with sourced answers
from €3,000
Start with a new manager's responsibilities
Walk through the preparation of one review with a new manager: what they understand after reading and where they still need a conversation. On the company's side you need someone who knows what is expected of managers, and the owners of the material. The new manager brings questions an experienced mentor no longer notices. The scope of the assistant is described on the private ChatGPT for your company page.
Worked example · Scenario
How we count the payback: answers from company documents
We run the same count for your documents in the free analysis.
€3,723
a month for finding answers to 800 questions in documents
Payback: 1 mo.
Our assumptions are 8 minutes to find an answer in documents or ask a colleague, and checking in 15% of the old time. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat, for companies with 10 or more employees. Model cost: Claude Sonnet 5.5, about 6,000 + 500 tokens per answer from documents, at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
See the full calculation →
