Making company knowledge usable in new ways – with a local AI chatbot and HCL Domino

Many companies possess extensive knowledge bases. Project documentation, manuals, support information, process descriptions or technical documents are available – but often difficult to find in everyday work.

Why corporate knowledge often remains hidden

The challenge is usually not in possessing information. The crucial factor is finding it quickly, reliably, and in the right context at the right moment.

This is precisely where our current AI proof of concept comes in. The goal is a company chatbot that answers questions in natural language and accesses existing company documents – without public cloud services and without data leakage.

How the approach works

The technical approach combines modern AI methods with a sovereign infrastructure. Documents are processed locally and prepared for semantic search using so-called embeddings.

This allows the system not only to find individual search terms, but also to recognize connections and meanings. The actual answer is then generated by a locally operated AI model via Ollama.

All data remains within the company.

The key advantage: All data remains within the company. No data is transferred to external AI providers. Companies retain full control over their information while simultaneously meeting high standards of data protection and compliance.

From PoC to productive use

The pragmatic approach is particularly interesting. A first MVP can start with a manageable number of PDF documents. Later, further knowledge sources can be integrated – for example, Domino applications, knowledge bases, support tickets, or project documentation.

Conclusion

AI doesn't have to be a huge project. Often, a clearly defined use case is enough to gain initial practical experience within a few days and to extract real added value from existing company data.