RAG or fine-tuning—which do we need?
For changing company knowledge, retrieval is usually the first option because sources remain visible and updateable. Fine-tuning is considered only when the task and evidence support it.
Service 02 / Knowledge systems
Turn fragmented information into source-grounded answers.
A 4–6 week pilot for teams that need faster, more trustworthy access to company information. The pilot combines approved-source retrieval, visible citations, evaluation and a usable search or assistant interface.
Engagement at a glance
- Best for
- Teams losing time searching across company information
- Typical format
- One focused pilot · 4–6 weeks
- Primary outcome
- An evaluated search or assistant experience
- Starting point
- Approved sources and representative user questions
01 / DETAIL
The business problem
People lose time searching across documentation, support material, internal platforms and databases. Answers are slow to assemble, difficult to verify and often depend on knowing where the right information lives.
02 / DETAIL
What Norrelium can build
The interface and retrieval approach are shaped around one real information task and the people who perform it.
- Internal knowledge assistants
- Support knowledge tools
- Semantic and multimodal search
- Document intelligence
- Research workspaces
- Onboarding assistants
- Permission-aware retrieval
03 / DETAIL
How reliability is engineered
Useful answers must show their evidence, respect access rules and say when the available information is insufficient.
- Approved-source ingestion
- Metadata and document lifecycle rules
- Retrieval and ranking tested against real questions
- Citations and source links
- Explicit fallback when evidence is insufficient
- Permission boundaries
- Evaluation dataset
- Latency, cost and usage visibility
04 / DETAIL
Pilot scope
A focused pilot proves whether the information experience is useful before expanding sources, users or integrations.
- One primary use case
- One or two approved information sources
- Ingestion and indexing
- Retrieval and answer workflow
- User interface
- Evaluation set
- Controlled deployment
- Architecture documentation and handover
05 / DETAIL
Client participation
The client supplies the source context and quality judgement needed to assess whether answers are genuinely useful.
- Named content or knowledge owner
- Representative source material
- Examples of real user questions
- Permission and identity requirements
- Review of answer quality and failure cases
06 / DETAIL
Success measures
The pilot establishes a baseline and reviews quality, speed and operating cost using representative questions.
- Answer acceptance
- Retrieval relevance
- Citation validity
- Unsupported-answer rate
- Response latency
- Cost per useful query
- Time saved per information request
07 / DETAIL
Timeline
A typical pilot takes 4–6 weeks. Source readiness, permission complexity and reviewer availability are the main scheduling variables.
08 / DETAIL
What this is not
This is not unrestricted access to all company data, a guarantee of perfect answers or a chatbot attached to uncurated files. Sources, users and failure behaviour are deliberately defined.
09 / DETAIL
Frequently asked questions
Common technical and operating questions.
Can the system respect document permissions?
Yes, when source permissions and user identity are available and included in the architecture. The pilot defines and tests the required boundaries.
Can it work with scanned files, images or tables?
Often yes. The ingestion approach depends on document quality, layout and the information users need to recover.
What happens after the pilot?
The evidence supports a decision to expand, revise or stop. A follow-on phase can add sources, integrations, users and production operating controls.
Next step
Is this the right engagement?
Share the current situation, desired result and constraints. Norrelium will confirm whether this engagement is the right starting point.