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Company brain AI for industrial proposals
Short answer
An AI knowledge base for industrial quoting shows the salesperson which approved information applies to the configuration in the enquiry, with the source, the revision and the scope of approval, and sends to an engineer whatever the document does not settle. At Syntalith an AI app on company documents costs from €3,000 net. At 300 requests for quotes a month with 20 minutes of searching each, it pays back in 1.0 month.
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
1.0 mo.
payback of a €3,000 app at 300 requests for quotes a month: €3,490 of searching today, €529 with the app. Scenario.
53.6%
According to Eurostat (2023), 53.6% of EU manufacturing companies used ERP software.
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
Similar wording does not establish applicability
A salesperson is preparing a quote for variant Z-40 with an extra control module. The product sheet at revision 5 describes the basic variant and the standard options, but it does not settle whether the module fits this configuration. The archive holds an answer to another customer in which an engineer approved the module for a different order.
- Does the user have access to the source
- Is the content current in the system the assistant uses
- Does the approved information cover the configuration in the current enquiry
A yes to one question does not settle the others. At acceptance, go through cases that are easy to confuse: a variant with a different revision, a sheet withdrawn from use and a role with no access to one of the sources. Keep some examples for the final evaluation, apart from the material used to refine the system.
What a quoting knowledge base costs and when it pays back
- Today
- 300 requests for quotes × 20 min = 100 h (€3,490)
- With the system, a person checks the output in 15% of the time
- €524
- Model, 1 call per case, Claude Sonnet 5.5
- €4.59
- Cost of one case
- €11.63 today, €1.76 with the system
- Saving
- €2,961 a month
Payback of €3,000
1.0 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 Anthropic (2024), contextual embeddings with BM25 search cut failed retrievals by 49% (Contextual Retrieval), which matters for variants with similar names.
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.
What to check in the sources
In Copilot Studio, Microsoft describes adding SharePoint and OneDrive files: copies go to Dataverse and are synchronised on a schedule, and the product checks permissions at query time. A changed document may wait for indexing. So decide when a new sheet has to be visible in the answers.
The salesperson knows the variant and looks for one sheet
a tidy catalogue and a reply template
no new app
Material in SharePoint, a simple choice
an agent in Copilot Studio
vendor licence
A configuration built from several documents and old answers
an AI app with version control
from €3,000
Agree on a first scope
The first scope is a chosen product family. The draft answer includes a link to the current sheet, the variant and the revision, and when there is no basis it passes a precise question to an engineer. The product owner describes the expected result of each case, and the sales manager approves the form of the answer. When the price has to be set once the variant is confirmed, the next stage is described on the quote automation page, and the delivery documentation on the document assistant for a manufacturer page.
For the first call, one question that regularly comes back to colleagues and a note of where the team looks for the answer 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 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 →
