Four Metrics That Actually Tell You Whether Your Enterprise RAG Is Working

Enterprise RAG — A practitioner's build log | Post 4 of 6

RAG evaluation in most implementations stops at one question: did the system retrieve the document that was supposed to be retrieved?

That is the right question for a consumer search product. It is an incomplete question for an enterprise knowledge system where some documents are accessible to all employees and others are restricted by role. In that environment, retrieval correctness is necessary but not sufficient. You also need to know whether restricted documents leaked into answers they should not have influenced.

Enterprise RAG implements four metrics. Each measures a different failure mode. Together they constitute a validation standard that is appropriate for internal knowledge systems handling mixed-sensitivity documents.

The four metrics and what each catches