AI for CIOs
How should you prepare company documents for an AI knowledge pilot?
SimplSolutions editorial team · Knowledge governance · 3 min read
Published
AI-assisted original editorial guidance. Calculations and scenarios are illustrative, not customer results.
Choose the answer before the document pile
Start with one employee question family and identify the sources that actually support it. A folder containing hundreds of files is not a defined knowledge project. Ask the owner which version is authoritative, which audience may use it and where the procedure applies. Leave unresolved sources pending rather than importing everything and asking the model to choose.
Use approved non-sensitive material for the first demonstration. Your security and privacy teams review any later private sources and processing path. Converting a document to a convenient format does not establish permission to upload it to a provider.
Preserve the context that changes the instruction
| Source element | Why to preserve it |
|---|---|
| Effective revision | Distinguishes current from obsolete guidance |
| Audience | Identifies intended employees |
| Applicability | Names location, device or process differences |
| Required sequence | Prevents isolated steps changing meaning |
| Exception rule | Shows when a person must decide |
| Source reference | Lets reviewers inspect authority |
A table or heading can carry meaning that plain extracted text loses. Inspect the ingested result for a few important passages. Ask whether a warning, condition or exception remains associated with the instruction it qualifies. File extraction succeeding is not proof that the procedure survived intact.
Illustrative editorial photograph, not a customer result.
Resolve contradictions with the owner
If two documents describe different steps, record the conflict and ask the authorized procedure owner to decide. Do not let recency of file modification or retrieval rank silently determine company policy. A newly edited draft may not be the approved version, and a frequently cited old guide may still be obsolete.
Record the decision in the source register. Keep the retained previous version under the appropriate access rules if it is needed for audit, but do not serve it as current instruction. Ask how source retirement reaches derived copies and saved outputs.
Test realistic questions after ingestion
Ask the ordinary question, an alternate phrasing, a missing-context question and a case the source cannot answer. Inspect the retrieved passage and generated claims. If the relevant guide does not appear, investigate ingestion and retrieval. If it appears but the answer omits a condition, investigate how the content is divided and supplied to generation.
Do not improve scores by rewriting every question into the source's exact terminology. Employees may use older names or omit details. The system should clarify when those details affect the answer rather than selecting the easiest interpretation.
Maintain the source after launch
Name the owner, refresh trigger and failure route. A preparation project is not complete when files are uploaded. When the policy changes, the assistant needs the correct approved update and a tested propagation path. Include that maintenance work in the proposal and pilot economics.
Complete the Company AI Source Register and run the stale-answer exercise. OWASP's RAG guidance covers provenance and ingestion risks; this preparation checklist does not establish a secure pipeline by itself. Request a source-preparation demo with one approved guide. SimplSolutions can help identify the useful source, required context and owner decisions before connecting a larger collection.
Put this to work this week
Choose one approved guide and inspect its ingested version with the owner. Check a condition, exception, table and revision reference. Ask a missing-context question and locate the retrieved passage. Mark extraction or applicability gaps before adding more files. Name who will approve the next revision and verify its propagation. A small maintained source that answers an important question is a better pilot input than a large unexplained document collection.
