AI for Business Continuity Planning: Prepare for the Bad Day

Fires, outages, cyber attacks, illness and supplier failures happen. A simple continuity plan helps you keep serving customers, and AI can help you draft it.

• Critical activities: what must keep running.
• Risks and scenarios: realistic things that could go wrong.
• Key people and roles, with backups.
• Systems and data: what's needed and how it's backed up.
• Suppliers and dependencies.
• Communication: who tells staff, customers and suppliers.
• Recovery steps and priorities.
• Contact lists and alternatives.

• Brainstorming scenarios specific to your sector.
• Business impact analysis: asking the right questions about downtime.
• Drafting checklists and templates.
• Communication templates: holding statements and customer notices.
• Exercise scenarios for practice drills.
• Plain-language summaries for staff.

1. List your 5 most critical activities.
2. For each, ask: "What if this stopped for a day? A week?"
3. Identify the dependencies: people, systems, suppliers and premises.
4. Use AI to draft workarounds and checklists.
5. Test with a short tabletop exercise.
6. Store the plan offline and share it with key people.
7. Review twice a year.

• Plans must be realistic. Check feasibility with the people responsible.
• Don't store sensitive credentials in AI tools or generic documents.
• Cyber incidents: include isolating systems, reporting duties and restoring from backups.
• Insurance: check what's covered.
• Keep paper copies of contacts and procedures in case systems fail.

A short, tested plan beats a long unread one. Use AI to draft quickly, then make it real with practice.