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AI knowledge sources after their author leaves
Short answer
When the author of documents leaves, the company assistant can lose a source, because the manual it answers from sits on their personal drive. So handing over duties also covers AI sources: moving chosen documents to the team library, a new owner and a check of the connection. At Syntalith an AI app on company documents costs from €3,000 net. At 150 questions about moved material a month, with 15 minutes of searching each, it pays back in 2.7 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
2.7 mo.
payback of a €3,000 app at 150 questions about moved material a month: €1,309 of searching today, €198 with the app. Scenario.
49%
According to Anthropic (2024), combining contextual embeddings with BM25 search cut the number of failed retrievals by 49%.
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) ↗
62%
According to Microsoft (2023), 62% of workers struggle with too much time spent searching for information.
20.0%
According to Eurostat (2025), 20.0% of EU companies with at least 10 employees used AI.
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
The file is needed, and its author is leaving
An events coordinator keeps the guide to ordering company materials on their own drive. They shared it with the department, and it was connected to the internal assistant. Before leaving, they give their successor the warehouse contact and the list of open orders, and nobody remembers that the assistant reads the guide from their account. Once the account is switched off, the assistant stops finding the answer.
- A list of the documents the assistant answers from
- Which of them sit on a personal drive
- App connections that depend on a specific person's account
- A new owner for each item
The whole personal drive does not go into the shared base automatically, because it may hold working notes and private files. The department names the material its daily work relies on, and the new owner can correct it and report problems with answers. If important explanations exist only in the leaver's memory, a separate conversation about handing over knowledge is needed.
What keeping AI knowledge sources after an author leaves costs and when it pays back
- Today
- 150 questions about moved material × 15 min = 37.5 h × €34.90 = €1,309
- With the system, a person checks the output in 15% of the time
- €196
- Model, 1 call per case, Claude Sonnet 5.5
- €2
- Cost of one case
- €8.73 today, €1.32 with the system
- Saving
- €1,111 a month
Payback of €3,000
2.7 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.
The model is a small item here. What decides the result is the time searching and asking around takes today, and how much of it is left for checking the answer. In the scenario we count the questions that, after the author leaves, go to colleagues because the assistant cannot find the source, and the time spent searching for a copy of the file.
Before pricing the 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 count the time from question to source. The test takes 5 working days and costs €0.
A retention period is not enough
Microsoft describes the OneDrive retention period after a Microsoft 365 user is deleted. It is a helpful admin setting, and it chooses no material and moves nothing to the team library. If the company has a working process for handing over files, and the assistant uses only shared libraries, a separate project is unnecessary and adding AI sources to the hand-over list is enough.
The assistant reads only shared libraries
AI sources on the hand-over list
no project
Some sources sit on personal drives
a review of sources before someone leaves
as part of maintenance
Connections depend on many people's accounts
rebuilding connections onto team libraries
from €3,000
Where to start
The first step is a list of the assistant's sources with the owner of each, made before a planned departure. Knowledge nobody wrote down is covered in the piece on handing over an expert's knowledge.
For the first call, one question that regularly goes back to colleagues and a note on where the team looks for answers are enough. You do not need to send confidential documents, and you get a written plan within 2 working days.
Worked example · Scenario
How we count the payback: answers from company documents
We run the same count for your documents in the free process review.
€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 →
