Your organisation already has the answers. They're in SharePoint document libraries, Google Drive folders, Confluence spaces, shared drives, and PDF archives that nobody navigates unless they absolutely have to.
The problem isn't a lack of knowledge. It's that nobody can find it when they need it.
Employees search three systems and still end up emailing a colleague. New starters wait days for someone to point them to the right handbook. Compliance teams can't be sure staff are reading the latest approved procedures. Support agents put customers on hold while they dig through folders. The same questions get answered dozens of times a month — by people who have better things to do.
General-purpose AI tools make this worse, not better. They generate plausible answers from training data, not from your actual documents. There's no audit trail, no citations, and no way to govern which content the AI draws from. For any organisation that cares about accuracy, compliance, or data governance, that's not a solution — it's a new risk.
The missing layer: governed knowledge
What organisations need isn't another general-purpose AI tool. It's an infrastructure layer that sits between their existing document stores and the people who need answers — one that understands the content, respects boundaries, and can prove where every answer came from.
This is what a governed AI knowledge layer does:
- Connects to documents where they already live. No migration, no re-uploading, no new repository to manage. The source of truth stays in SharePoint, Google Drive, or Confluence.
- Indexes selectively. You choose exactly which folders, drives, or spaces are queryable. It's a curated knowledge base, not an open search across everything a user can access.
- Grounds every answer in source documents. Every response includes citations — links back to the specific documents the answer was derived from. If the answer isn't in the indexed content, the system says so rather than guessing.
- Maintains an audit trail. Every query, every response, every source access is logged. When a compliance team asks "how do staff access the latest procedures?", you have a traceable answer.
Introducing AnswerVault
AnswerVault is a governed AI knowledge layer that connects your organisation's existing document sources and delivers accurate, source-backed answers through web chat, Microsoft Teams, Slack, CLI, or API.
You connect a document source with OAuth, select the content you want to include, and your team can start asking questions in natural language — in minutes, not months. AI is included in every plan. There are no API keys to configure, no token budgets to manage, and no per-query costs.
What makes AnswerVault different
Governed knowledge bases, not open search. Tools like Microsoft Copilot search everything a user has access to. That's useful in some contexts, but it means you can't control which documents the AI draws from. AnswerVault lets you curate exactly what's queryable — a governed knowledge base built from the documents you choose.
External access without internal licences. Contractors, delivery partners, auditors, and external stakeholders can query a curated knowledge base without needing a Microsoft licence or access to your tenant. This is a structural limitation of Copilot that AnswerVault resolves architecturally.
Cross-ecosystem search. If your organisation uses SharePoint in one department, Google Drive in another, and Confluence for engineering, AnswerVault searches all three in one query. No more "which tool is it in?"
Data residency and sovereignty. Your data is processed and stored on EU and UK infrastructure. Business and Enterprise tiers offer explicit region selection. For organisations subject to the US CLOUD Act — which allows US authorities to compel US-headquartered providers to produce customer data regardless of where it's hosted — the Enterprise sovereign tier resolves this architecturally: no US-headquartered provider at any layer of the stack.
Built for regulated enterprise. AnswerVault was originally developed for a global pharmaceutical company with strict data governance and GxP documentation requirements. The same architecture now powers the SaaS platform. It's enterprise-hardened from day one — not a prototype being scaled up. GDPR compliant, ISO 27001 aligned, G-Cloud listed, ISO 42001 underway.
Who it's for
AnswerVault is designed for organisations where knowledge accuracy matters:
- IT and engineering teams — architecture decisions, runbooks, API documentation, onboarding guides. Stop answering the same questions.
- HR teams — policies, handbooks, procedures. Employees find answers themselves instead of emailing HR.
- Operations teams — SOPs, compliance documentation, process guides. The right procedure, every time.
- Customer support — product docs, troubleshooting guides, playbooks. Faster resolutions, happier customers.
- Distributed organisations — bridge the knowledge gap across offices, time zones, and tool ecosystems.
Get started
AnswerVault's Starter tier is free — connect a document source and see how governed knowledge search works. No credit card required. Setup takes minutes.
For organisations evaluating Business or Enterprise tiers, talk to us about data residency, external access, and dedicated deployments.
AnswerVault is built by Catapult CX, an enterprise technology consultancy. The product was originally developed for a global pharmaceutical company with strict data governance requirements — the same architecture now powers the SaaS platform.