AI assistant for business — how to choose one that actually works for your company
How to choose an AI assistant for your company: ChatGPT, Copilot, or private AI on your own hardware. Security, real cost, and Romanian support.
"I want an AI assistant for the company." — that's the most frequent request we get from Romanian directors and managers. But behind those words is a problem: the term "AI assistant" means very different things depending on who's saying it.
For a freelancer, "AI assistant" = ChatGPT. For a 50-person company, "AI assistant" should mean a lot more: a system that knows your customers, contracts, emails, and decisions, and answers questions in seconds, in Romanian, with verifiable sources.
This guide is about how to pick the right AI assistant for a Romanian company — not for an individual test drive.
What an AI assistant for a business needs to do
Here's the minimum checklist. If your vendor doesn't tick these, it's not a business AI assistant — it's a chatbot.
1. Direct access to company data
Test question: "What's the status of the [client] renewal?"
A good AI assistant answers in 2-3 bullets with sources from your emails, meetings, and documents. A chatbot asks you to copy in context first.
ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude — without integration, these are chatbots. They become AI assistants only when you connect your data sources and give them persistent memory.
2. Native understanding of Romanian
Not "multilingual support". Not "translated UI". Native.
Test: Ask "Which invoices are past due?"
- An AI with "multilingual support" looks for the words "past due" — and misses 80% of emails that say "overdue", "unpaid", "outstanding".
- A natively Romanian AI understands that "termen depășit", "scadență trecută", "neîncasat", "arierat" are all semantically equivalent — and finds all of them.
Doyna uses embedding models (e5-large-v2 *) that natively understand Romanian financial and legal vocabulary — not through a translation layer.
3. Verifiable sources for every answer
An AI assistant without sources is dangerous. It can hallucinate with maximum confidence.
Requirement: Every answer must come with links directly to the email, document, or meeting where the information lives. You can verify in 5 seconds.
Doyna inlines sources for every claim. Click the source → open the original email.
4. Privacy — your data doesn't go where it shouldn't
For a Romanian company, this means three things:
- EU residency. Data does not go through the US. Essential for GDPR.
- Contractual zero-training. The vendor does not train models on your data. Guaranteed in the contract, not in the privacy policy footer.
- Single-tenant. Your data lives in a separate instance, not in a shared database with other customers.
Consumer ChatGPT (Plus) does NOT meet any of these. ChatGPT Enterprise meets them partially. Doyna meets all three.
5. Integration with the tools you actually use
Not with "the tools you should use if you bought everything from Microsoft". With the ones you actually use today:
- Gmail or Outlook
- Google Drive or OneDrive or Dropbox
- Slack or Teams
- CRM (HubSpot, Pipedrive, or a Romanian CRM)
- Calendar (Google or Outlook)
- Possibly: accounting, ERP, Notion, Linear
Microsoft Copilot integrates only with Microsoft. Google Gemini integrates only with Google. For a company with mixed tools (very typical in Romania), you need an AI that supports them all.
Doyna integrates 40+ sources *, including Gmail, Outlook, Google Drive and SharePoint, with SAP, Salesforce and Jira in progress.
6. Document generation with real data, not templates
Ask an AI assistant: "Create a weekly board report with top 5 deals, status, blockers, and predicted close."
- A chatbot writes a text with a report layout, full of placeholders.
- A good AI assistant pulls real data from CRM, cross-references it with recent emails, and generates a real PDF or PPTX with concrete numbers.
Doyna generates PPTX, PDF, XLSX with live data. Not templates — real documents ready to present.
Types of AI assistants on the market
General AI assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini)
Good for generic tasks: writing, brainstorming, translation, code. Weak for working with company data: no native integration with your sources, every conversation starts "from scratch" without persistent memory, sources often missing.
Verdict: Good as an individual tool. Insufficient as a company AI assistant.
Suite-integrated AI assistants (Copilot, Gemini Workspace)
Good if you're 100% inside one ecosystem (Microsoft or Google). Weak if you use varied tools (Gmail + Slack + Trello + a Romanian CRM — Copilot only sees Outlook + Teams).
Verdict: Good for companies with full technology lock-in. Limiting for everyone else.
Dedicated business AI assistants (Glean, Doyna, Hebbia)
Built specifically to be the "brain" of the company: integration with dozens of sources, knowledge graph, semantic search, document generation, workflow automation.
Key difference for the Romanian market: Glean and Hebbia are American, expensive (market estimates: $40-80/user/month with a ~100-seat minimum), and don't natively support Romanian. Doyna is built in Cluj-Napoca and is bilingual by default.
Comparison: AI assistants for a Romanian company
| Criterion | ChatGPT Plus | Microsoft Copilot | Glean | Doyna |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Native Romanian understanding | Translation layer | Translation layer | English only | Native |
| Connects to Gmail | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Connects to Outlook | No | Yes (M365) | Yes | Yes |
| Connects to local CRMs | No | Limited | Limited | Yes (custom adapter) |
| Graph index over your corpus | No | MS Graph only | Yes | Yes — Neo4j, next to a vector and a relational index |
| Generates PPTX with real charts | No | Templates only | No | Yes |
| Self-hosted | No | No | No | Yes |
| EU residency guaranteed | No | Partial | No | Yes |
| Starting price | $20 | $30 (on top of M365) | $40-80 (estimated) | On request |
Questions to ask any AI assistant vendor
Before signing a contract, ask:
- "Is my data used to train AI models?" — You want a "no" in the contract, not just on the website.
- "Where is my data physically stored?" — You want "EU" or "on my servers". Not "on our global infrastructure".
- "What sources can we connect?" — List your sources. Check them off one by one.
- "How does the AI answer questions — with sources?" — Ask for a demo. See with your own eyes that answers have clickable sources.
- "Does it understand Romanian?" — Ask for a test on your actual email. Ask a Romanian question about a real client relationship.
- "Can I self-host?" — If "no", maybe it doesn't matter to you. If "no, but we have private cloud", check what that actually means.
- "What's the cost for 50 people?" — You want a clear number, not "depends, let's chat".
How to test an AI assistant on your own data
The best way to choose is a pilot on real (not synthetic) data. Here's a one-week plan:
Day 1-2: Connect data
- Connect Gmail or Outlook (the biggest information sources).
- Connect 1-2 important recent documents (a contract, a proposal, a report).
- Wait for sync (a few hours per 10,000 emails).
Day 3-5: Ask real questions
Not "hi, what's your name?". Real business questions:
- "Which 5 most recent customers have billing issues?"
- "What was discussed in last week's [company] meeting?"
- "Which deals are closing in 30 days and what blockers exist?"
- "Who on my team has the strongest relationship with [person]?"
Track: how good was the answer, did it have sources, did it understand Romanian, how fast was it.
Day 6: Test document generation
- "Generate a weekly board report."
- "Summarize the 3 most important email threads from this week."
- "Create a Q1 financial memo."
Check: does the document have real data or placeholders? Is it ready to present or does it need to be rewritten?
Day 7: Decide
If the AI saved 5+ hours this week, it's worth buying. If it saved 1-2 hours, no — the cost isn't justified.
Why "Romanian" matters
In Romania, there are specifics that make the difference between a useful AI assistant and a frustrating one:
Email rules in Romanian: "I don't want emails from promo@pcgarage.ro anymore" needs to work. With Doyna, it works. With Microsoft Copilot, you write the rule in English (or it translates internally and loses nuance).
Financial and legal vocabulary: "Stornare", "neimpozabil", "cotă redusă TVA", "aviz de însoțire" — an AI that doesn't know this vocabulary will hallucinate.
Local data structures: CRMs like SmartBill, Tremend, or ContPlus aren't even on the radar of American solutions. Doyna has custom adapters.
Legislation and GDPR: Romanian companies under EU jurisdiction have strict data residency requirements. Doyna runs inside your own network; ChatGPT and Copilot process data in the US.
How to try Doyna
Two ways, pick whichever fits:
Book a 30-min call. Schedule a quick chat. I'll ask about your workflow, show you Doyna answering a few realistic examples for your company, and tell you honestly whether it's worth it. No slides, no pressure. We're in Cluj-Napoca — if you're nearby, coffee on us.
Or see it on your own data. Request a demo. We connect Gmail or Outlook with you, load 1-2 documents, and you ask the same question you'd ask ChatGPT or Copilot.
Compare:
- Which one answers more accurately on your data?
- Which finds all relevant emails (not just the ones with exact keywords)?
- Which understands Romanian better?
- Which gives you sources you can verify?
If Doyna isn't better, don't buy.
See full capabilities → · View pricing → · Compare with Copilot and Glean →
* Technical specifics — the exact connector list behind "40+ sources" and the embedding model in use — are current as of publication and available on request at team@doyna.ai.