Blog · Published · Updated
Company Brain for export operations
Short answer
An AI knowledge base in an export team finds the distributor's instructions attached to the current order and the contact, so a colleague covering the account knows what to prepare before booking freight. At Syntalith an AI app on company documents costs from €3,000 net. At 300 order questions a month with 15 minutes of searching each, it pays back in 1.4 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
1.4 mo.
payback of a €3,000 app at 300 order questions a month: €2,618 of searching today, €398 with the app. Scenario.
56%
According to the EU Payment Observatory (2025), 56% of exporters reported problems with delayed payments in 2024.
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) ↗
49%
According to Anthropic (2024), combining contextual embeddings with BM25 search cut failed retrievals by 49%, and by 67% with reranking.
50%
According to the European Commission (2026), half of EU SMEs and mid-caps name high investment costs as a barrier to AI.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer 578 (2026) ↗
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
Photos before booking freight
The distributor's instructions for the current order require a photo of the rating plate with the serial number and a photo of the closed crate. They name the contact who, after receiving the photos, confirms that freight can be booked. In an older thread the distributor wrote only that the goods should be sent when ready. A colleague takes over the order while the account manager is away.
Order instructions
apply
The approved requirements and contact for the current shipment.
Older thread
history
It helps you understand the relationship, but it does not replace the instructions.
Conflicting documents
a question
When neither says which to use, the colleague goes back to the account manager.
A change passed on by email goes to the place colleagues use, with a note of which orders it concerns. Access to the library does not settle which shipment a record found concerns, which is why the instructions are linked to the distributor and the order. Booking transport and sending a message are separate actions.
What an export knowledge base costs and when it pays back
- Today
- 300 order questions × 15 min = 75 h (€2,618)
- With the system, a person checks the output in 15% of the time
- €393
- Model, 1 call per case, Claude Sonnet 5.5
- €4.59
- Cost of one case
- €8.73 today, €1.33 with the system
- Saving
- €2,220 a month
Payback of €3,000
1.4 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.
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.
Check whether the existing library is enough
If the instructions are attached to the order in your current system, improving their visibility is enough. In a company on SharePoint, an agent on chosen material is worth checking: Microsoft describes SharePoint agents that use selected sources and content the user has access to. Retrieval decides the quality: according to Anthropic (2024), contextual embeddings with BM25 cut failed retrievals by 49% (Contextual Retrieval).
Instructions attached to the order
better visibility in the system
no new app
Material in SharePoint
a SharePoint agent on chosen sources
vendor licence
Order, instructions and arrangements kept apart
an AI app that joins the sources
from €3,000
Helping colleagues cover distributor accounts
The first scope is the pre-shipment instructions of a chosen group of distributors, where covering for a colleague most often ends in a phone call. Account managers name the current arrangements, and the covering colleagues judge whether the answer lets them handle the order. Add an older email that conflicts with the instructions to the trial. When the team knows the arrangements but needs a clear message in English, an export correspondence workshop is more useful. The scope 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 →
