Novalis
Answer compliance questions. With evidence.
Novalis drafts questionnaires, DDQs and audit requests from your own directives, policies and reports. Every statement carries its source, and every answer is approved by your team.
Product overview
60–90 s · Questionnaire in, evidenced answers out · muted with subtitles
The problem
Compliance ties specialists to work that has already been done once.
The number of questionnaires keeps growing, the knowledge is scattered, and every answer has to be backed by evidence.
Growing workload
DDQs, security questionnaires and audits occupy specialists for days and weeks.
Answers are buried
The knowledge exists, but it sits in long directives, policies and audit reports. Every answer means searching, reading, interpreting and drafting.
The same questions, again
Many questions have been answered several times before. Yet every round starts from zero.
Knowledge goes stale
Rules and directives change constantly. What is correct today may be wrong tomorrow.
What Novalis is
A system that knows your documents.
Novalis reads your documents and derives answers from them, following three fixed rules.
Only your knowledge
Answers are drawn exclusively from the documents provided, not from the general knowledge of a language model.
Every statement backed
For every sentence, Novalis cites the underlying passage with file, page and section.
No invented answers
Where the basis is missing, Novalis says so, rather than producing an answer that merely sounds plausible.
Why Novalis
Two things we often hear.
“We already have a compliance tool.”
GRC tools manage answers. Novalis works them out.
Conventional tools store templates that someone maintains by hand, and those templates go stale as soon as a directive changes. Novalis answers directly from your current document collection.
“Why not just load the documents into an AI chat?”
A chatbot gives answers. Novalis gives answers you can verify.
An AI chat holds a handful of files; your knowledge sits in thousands. Access rights, approval and an audit trail are missing, and the chat forgets what your team has already reviewed. For compliance, “sounds plausible” is not enough.
| Conventional GRC tool | General AI chat | Novalis | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Answers from current documents | ✕Manually maintained templates | ~Individual documents, uploaded by hand, quickly outdated | ✓Synchronized automatically |
| Entire document collection searchable | ✕No | ✕A few files per chat | ✓Thousands of documents, entire SharePoint sites |
| Source for every statement | ✕No | ~Not reliable | ✓File, page, section |
| No invented answers | ✓No AI | ✕Fills gaps with general knowledge | ✓Reports a missing basis |
| Access rights per document area | ✓Yes | ✕No | ✓Role-based |
| Approval & audit trail | ✓Yes | ✕No | ✓Yes, answer locked afterwards |
| Reuse of approved answers | ~Manually maintained library | ✕Every session starts over | ✓Automatically, as a reviewed source |
| Questionnaire in its original format | ~Partially | ✕No | ✓Import & export |
| Operation in your infrastructure | ~Depends on the vendor | ✕The vendor's cloud | ✓Your own instance: cloud, Azure or on-site |
Use case 1 · Questionnaires
From a blank questionnaire to a reviewed draft.
Upload the questionnaire as it arrived. Novalis returns it in the same format, completed and approved.
Upload
Excel or Word in the original format. Map the columns once.
Choose a knowledge base
Define which documents answers may be drawn from.
Assign
Distribute questions with deadlines to the responsible specialists.
Generate drafts
Novalis writes an evidenced draft answer for every question.
Review & approve
The responsible person confirms. Only then does the answer count.
Export
The questionnaire comes back in its original format. No reformatting.
Every approved answer becomes a reviewed source. When the question comes up again, in the next questionnaire or in different words, Novalis suggests the answer that has already been approved. With every questionnaire, the next round gets faster.
A questionnaire from start to finish
30–45 s screen recording · Upload → mapping → drafts → export in the original format
Use case 2 · Chat
Ask your documents.
Beyond questionnaires: anyone who needs to look up a rule asks in natural language and receives an evidenced answer.
- Sources inside the answer: one click leads to the passage.
- Honest about gaps: no basis, no answer.
- Always current: changed documents are searchable within minutes.
- Traceable: every conversation is kept.
Within what period do we have to report a data breach?
Breaches that are likely to result in a high risk are reported to the FDPIC as soon as possible 1. Internally, notification to the Privacy Office is required within 24 hours 2.
What is our cyber insurance coverage limit?
The approved documents contain no information on this. Please contact the responsible department.
Control
The AI drafts. Your team decides.
Novalis does not replace the compliance function. It takes on the research, the drafting and the search for evidence; responsibility and approval stay with people.
Role-based access
Each knowledge base has its own permissions. Answers draw only on documents the person is allowed to see; beyond that, there is not even a hint that other documents exist.
Mandatory approval
Every draft stays “to review” until it is confirmed. After that, the answer is locked.
Audit trail
Every change is logged and available to internal audit at any time.
Collaboration
Comments and mentions directly on the question, without email back and forth.
Protection against manipulation
Every document is checked for hidden instructions (prompt injection) before it is ingested.
Least privilege
New accounts start without access. Permissions are granted deliberately, not inherited.
Assign, discuss, approve
20–30 s loop · Assign a question → @mention → approval locks the answer
Operation & deployment
You decide where your data is processed.
One platform, three operating models. Novalis synchronizes with SharePoint or your folders, reads more than 25 file formats, and checks every document for hidden instructions before ingesting it.
Data flow
One data flow, three operating models.
Your choice of operation
Same platform, different location.
On the left, Novalis ingests documents; on the right, it answers questions. Only the knowledge base is fixed. Every other component can be exchanged.
In every option
- Your own instance, not a shared platform
- Documents and knowledge bases in your environment
- No access from outside, updates outbound only
The models named are examples and can be exchanged to suit your requirements.
Who it is for
Built for organizations that have to back up what they say.
Law firms
Client onboarding, due diligence questions and internal guidelines.
Asset managers
DDQs from investors and investment consultants, consistent across every round.
Insurers & banks
Vendor, security and supervisory questionnaires in high volume.
Frequently asked questions
What compliance teams want to know first.
Are our data used to train AI models?
No. Your documents serve only as the source for answers. In on-premise operation, they never leave your infrastructure.
What happens when Novalis finds no answer?
Novalis marks the question as not supported by the documents instead of inventing an answer. The specialist completes it manually.
Which formats are supported?
More than 25 file formats, including PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Questionnaires are returned in their original format.
How long does the rollout take?
After a joint workshop, we set up a test environment and accompany your team through onboarding.
Does Novalis replace our compliance team?
No. Novalis does the groundwork. Every answer is reviewed and approved by a responsible person.
See Novalis with your own questionnaire.
In a 30-minute demo, we show how Novalis handles one of your questionnaires.