How to prepare your company’s knowledge for AI

1. Make an inventory with a purpose

Start with the information the task needs: procedures, manuals, frequently asked questions or policies. Record each source’s location, format, owner and last review. Add its intended audience and access requirements.

A useful inventory also exposes gaps. If an answer exists only in a person’s experience, it needs to be documented and validated before it becomes an approved source.

2. Confirm ownership and access

Assign someone to confirm which content is current. Distinguish document ownership from permission to share it: a file being available in a folder does not mean every user should see it.

Define which sources each user role may consult and how those restrictions will be checked. For a pilot, include only information whose access and use have been authorized.

3. Resolve duplicates and versions

Find copies, old versions and conflicting documents. Choose the current source and preserve the details needed to reference it: title, link or identifier, version and applicable date. If a policy varies by region or product, make that distinction explicit.

Check that the text is readable and retains its context. A table needs its headings; a procedure needs its conditions and exceptions. Scanned files require a check of the extracted content.

4. Prepare evaluation questions

Write common questions and identify the information that should support each answer. Include ambiguous questions, topics with no source and cases a user is not authorized to consult. Evaluate separately whether the right material was retrieved and whether the answer used it correctly.

Ask someone who knows the process to review the results. Recording specific errors helps distinguish content problems from retrieval or interpretation problems.

5. Plan for updates

Define what triggers an update, who approves it and how a previous version is retired. Agree how to check that a change has reached the assistant. Maintenance should be part of the operating plan from the pilot onward.

A preparation checklist

• One task and an initial set of sources.
• An owner, version and reference for each document.
• Permissions for each user role.
• Reviewed duplicates and contradictions.
• Test questions with expected supporting material.
• A process for updating and retiring content.

I can help prepare your sources and evaluate a knowledge assistant. To review a starting point, discuss your project with me.

If you are still defining the task, read how to choose your first AI project. The guide to chatbots, RAG and agents explains when a query is enough and when tools are needed.