Combining Internal Knowledge with External Intelligence

The Problem

A back-office financial services firm had knowledge trapped in silos everywhere. Client information lived in the CRM. Project discussions happened in Slack. Proposals and deliverables were scattered across Google Drive. Contact details and relationship history were in Airtable. And critical market intelligence, competitor moves, regulatory changes, client company news, lived out on the open web and LinkedIn.

Employees spent a staggering amount of time searching for information. A simple client question might require checking four different internal systems before the employee could even begin to formulate an answer. And if the answer required external context, like recent news about a client's industry or a competitor's latest move, that was an entirely separate research process.

The firm's leadership recognised that this fragmentation was not just an efficiency problem. It was a competitive disadvantage. Competitors who could synthesise internal knowledge with external intelligence faster would deliver better client experiences, spot opportunities sooner, and make more informed decisions. The firm needed a single interface that could search everything, internal and external, at once.

The Solution

BetterBrain built an enterprise search platform augmented with external web data. The system connects to the firm's CRM, Airtable, Slack, and Google Drive for internal knowledge, and simultaneously searches the web, LinkedIn, and other external sources for market intelligence. Custom ranking functions, re-rankers, query expansion, and contextual embeddings ensure that the most relevant results surface first, regardless of whether they come from an internal Slack thread or a public news article.

The interface is a ChatGPT-style chatbot that anyone in the firm can use without training. Employees ask questions in natural language and get synthesised answers that combine internal institutional knowledge with fresh external intelligence. The system understands context, so a question about a specific client automatically pulls in both the firm's internal history with that client and recent external news.

The design philosophy was simplicity. If any employee can use ChatGPT, they can use this. No training sessions, no complex query syntax, no switching between tools. Just ask a question, get a comprehensive answer with sources, and get back to work.

The Number

• Significant time saved searching for information across platforms
• Superior client experience from faster, more informed responses
• Competitive differentiation through combined internal and external intelligence
• Revenue growth from better-informed client interactions
• Every employee gained instant access to the firm's collective knowledge