Bridging the 5%: how Minasolve makes AI tangible with delaware

Feb 05, 2026

IT
operations
chemicals
artificial intelligence

In a market where 95% of AI initiatives fail (according to a study by MIT Sloan), Minasolve did what many don’t: it made AI work. Led by Quality System Manager and IT Business Partner Laurent Debast, the company paired structure with vision, connecting its quality and marketing data in Microsoft SharePoint to delaware’s Knowly framework. The result is years of knowledge made instantly accessible through a conversational AI assistant. The project builds on nearly a decade of partnership: delaware has long been Minasolve’s trusted SAP partner, and that trust now extends to AI. (Reading time: 5 minutes)

Challenge

Minasolve set out to test the real potential of generative AI. The goal was simple: turn structured knowledge into a source of daily efficiency and insight.

Solution

delaware introduced a generative AI RAG framework to help Minasolve unlock the value of its structured knowledge base. The result is a trusted AI assistant that makes complex information easy to find and apply.

Result

Employees now get reliable answers in seconds, freeing time for higher-value work and proving that, with clean data and the right partner, AI can truly deliver.

Challenge

Each business unit of the Minafin Group manages large volumes of technical and regulatory information. For Minasolve, producer of green chemistry ingredients for personal care, this meant thousands of documents and data sheets. Finding the right information was slow and relied on a few experts.

Group leadership wanted clear proof that AI could deliver real value. “The question wasn’t if AI would change work, but how,” says Laurent. “People needed faster, smarter access to the knowledge they already had.”

An early AI test in the legal department showed the limits of messy, unstructured data. When that pilot stalled, Laurent saw an opening. Minasolve’s ISO 9001–ready quality system provided exactly what AI needs: clean, organized data. “AI isn’t magic,” he notes. “It only works when your data is clean. We knew we had that maturity at Minasolve. Now it was time to cash in on it.”

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Top management wanted to see if AI could deliver real value, not just hype. The challenge was how to give people faster, smarter access to the knowledge they already had.

Laurent Debast, Quality System Manager & IT Business Partner at Minasolve

Solution

Minasolve turned to delaware, a trusted partner of the Minafin Group for nearly a decade, to bring the idea to life. Over the years, delaware had already guided Minafin through several key digital milestones, including its SAP implementation, a Microsoft 365 intranet, and early AI proof-of-concepts. That foundation of trust and technical insight made delaware the natural choice to take Minasolve’s next innovation step. With Knowly, delaware’s Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) framework, the team built a secure, domain-specific generative AI assistant that connects directly to Minasolve’s structured data.

Knowly integrates directly with a company’s existing systems, combining advanced data retrieval with natural-language interaction. For Minasolve, the setup connected directly to its Microsoft SharePoint environment, giving employees a way to ask questions and receive sourced answers drawn from approved documents.

Compared with out-of-the-box tools such as Microsoft Copilot , Knowly provides higher accuracy, data transparency, and cost control. “Copilot was still limited at that time,” Laurent recalls. “With Knowly, we can ask complex questions and get relevant, sourced answers. It feels like a real shortcut to our own knowledge.”

What did
we do?

Structured foundations

delaware connected Knowly to Minasolve’s SharePoint setup, originally built for ISO compliance. The system already contained categorized and verified documentation, making it ideal for AI ingestion and vectorization.

From proof to production

The project began as a proof-of-concept in late 2024. Together, Minasolve and delaware refined prompts, tuned the retrieval models, and validated responses through hands-on testing. By mid-2025, the chatbot was live and used across the Minasolve team.

A shared learning curve

The partnership evolved beyond implementation. As delaware improved Knowly with new features such as advanced ingestion controls and multilingual support, Minasolve automatically benefited. This co-creation model ensured both sides grew their GenAI expertise together.

AI gives us a shortcut, but only because we had structure first. This AI RAG framework lets us use what we already know, faster and smarter.

Laurent Debast, Quality System Manager & IT Business Partner at Minasolve

Results

Knowly has changed how people work. Marketing, quality, and IT teams now draft product descriptions, summarize procedures, and check compliance in seconds. “When you have to find a technical detail or a compliance rule, you used to ask around or browse for hours,” says Laurent. “Now you just ask Knowly.”

For marketing, the impact was immediate. “I use it often,” says Viktoria Potko. “It helps me turn complex data into something customers understand. And because it’s based on our own documents, I can trust the results.”

Security reinforces that trust. Knowly runs fully inside Minafin’s Azure environment. “For us, data security is non-negotiable,” Laurent says. “We know exactly where our data lives and who can access it.”

The project also boosted Minasolve’s innovation culture. A small experiment became proof that structured data plus generative AI delivers real value. “We’re learning by doing,” Laurent says. “Sometimes tools fall short, and that’s fine. What matters is building experience so we’re ready for what’s next."

Minasolve & delaware

Minasolve, part of the Minafin Group, develops sustainable, high-performance ingredients for the personal care and chemical industries. Its focus on quality and innovation drives a continuous search for better processes and smarter tools.

delaware has been Minafin’s technology partner for nearly ten years, supporting SAP, Microsoft 365, and multiple AI proof-of-concepts. “delaware helps us keep pace with change. They bring expertise, but they also listen. That is what makes it a partnership, not just a project,” Laurent says.