AI, in many quarters, has become a tech buzzword. But AI can have a major role to play in ensuring business resilience, the ability to absorb change and adapt to a new environment.
One area where AI and AI-adjacent technologies can have an impact is in business continuity management and business continuity plans.
Indeed, the introduction of AI and AI-adjacent technologies into business continuity software can enhance problem solving, decision making, and creativity for software users.
How exactly? In the subsequent article, we discuss the role of AI in business continuity management and business continuity plans.
What is AI?
Artificial intelligence (AI) itself encompasses a broad suite of technologies. What those technologies have in common is the ability to enable computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, decision making, creativity, and autonomy.
Simplifying further, AI-enabled applications and devices can see and identify objects.
They also tend to be responsive to human language, while “learning” from new information and experiences.
These technologies can, then, make detailed recommendations to users, with the result at times being independent action or intelligence.
What is business continuity management?
Business continuity management, for its part, refers to the holistic management process of identifying potential threats to an organization and the impacts to business operations.
As BC managers know all too well, their job involves quickly identifying and responding to potential disruptions quickly.
That’s where the business continuity plan (BCP) comes in.
It’s the BCP that provides a collection of resources, actions, procedures, and information, designed to prepare organizations to maintain essential functions in the event of a disaster or other major disruption.
How AI can enhance business continuity planning
How does AI fit into the mix? Well, let’s tick through the things AI is conventionally known to be good for. That includes:
- Analyzing lots of data from multiple sources in real time
- Providing early warning
- Serving up actionable insights and recommendations
- Improving visibility
- Enabling proactive risk management
Those attributes map on to business continuity management (in particular, business continuity planning) quite seamlessly. And according to consensus in the field, AI and AI-adjacent technologies can offer the following benefits to business continuity management:
Real-time monitoring and analysis
As noted, AI can monitor vast amounts of data from numerous sources (e.g., government health data, sanctioned weather sources on social media, etc.). That information can then be used to proactively manage risks and take timely action to minimize the impact of a disruption.
Provide predictive analysis
AI doesn’t just sift through data in the here and now. It also analyzes historical data, i.e., what’s happened in the past. Why does that matter? Past actions are predictors of future happenings. In other words, AI, by detecting similarities between past and present actions, can be key to providing predictive analysis of what’s going to happen next.
Automate key processes
BCM process, such as the business impact analysis, can be heavily manual and tedious. AI and AI-adjacent technologies like workflows can automate that kind of tedious work. For instance, workflows can be rigged up to automate the following core BCM tasks:
- Business impact analysis (BIA) reports, business continuity plans (BCPs), and recovery-strategies’ approval process
- Notifications to prioritized business activity owners whenever the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is changed on a business asset their activity is dependent on
- Pre-configured workflow for incident escalations. Once an incident is created, and the severity changes from Critical, High, Medium to Low, different voice messages, emails, and SMS notifications are triggered.
Enhance decision making
The overall impact of these technologies, though, is to enhance informed decision making by giving decision makers more cogent, tested analysis. For instance, AI and AI-adjacent technologies can provide accurate and timely information in the form of visualizations for visual learners, which can yield better decision making.
Should you launch into AI for business continuity management today?
I’m sold; when do I add AI to my business continuity management program?
There are a few intervening steps to take before leveraging AI for business continuity management.
For instance, you should ask yourself:
- How good is my data? AI relies on consistent, up-to-date data.
- Do I have the right people? Leveraging AI isn’t as simple as turning on a faucet. You need the right experts in place.
- What are my existing systems? Your company’s data is in existing, legacy systems. It’s important, as such, to know if those systems will integrate with AI and AI-adjacent technologies.
- Am I up on my security? AI relies on data, but data today is highly vulnerable, particularly the kind of business data that’s used in business continuity management. You need a plan of action to ensure your data is secure before you go down the AI pipeline.
Finally, AI and AI-enabled technologies are here to stay. And they will be making increasing contributions to business continuity management and business continuity planning.
But if you’re on the market for business continuity software today, consider the power of automation, analytics, and monitoring, as well.
Solutions like Noggin consolidate data to give you valuable insights and let you visualize through interactive dashboards, enabling a proactive approach to managing business continuity processes.
Add to that, Noggin’s flexible dashboards and analytics capabilities ensure you always cater to your unique stakeholders, increasing visibility, transparency, and appreciation of business continuity across your organization.
But don’t just take our word for it. See Noggin in action for yourself in a tailored software demonstration.
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