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Yes AI - AI Solutions Australia

Business Continuity Planning

Prepare a recovery plan your team can check and practise

Identify the services your business needs during a disruption, who can make decisions and what recovery depends on. Yes AI can help organise the records and draft planning material. Your responsible team verifies the arrangements, approves the plan and tests the recovery steps.

Discuss your workflow (03) 9003 0111

30-minute consultation: free for businesses with 20+ full-time staff; otherwise AUD200 including GST.

What the workflow can include

01

Identify critical services and dependencies

Start with the services customers and staff rely on. Map the people, premises, suppliers, information and technology needed to continue each one. Look for dependencies that share the same office, provider or account. Record an owner and a current source for each assumption so the plan can be reviewed when circumstances change.

02

Agree priorities and decision authority

Discuss the consequences of interruption and agree what must recover first. Record acceptable interruption and data loss as objectives to test, rather than guaranteed performance. Identify who can activate the plan, authorise expenditure, contact advisers and suspend unsafe or unreliable operations. Keep deputies and contact details current.

03

Document the practical fallback

Describe how essential work could continue if a particular dependency is unavailable. This may involve approved manual records, alternate communications or an agreed supplier arrangement. Check access and capacity with the people involved. Specify how records created during the interruption will be reconciled when the normal service returns.

04

Check backup and recovery evidence

Ask system owners what is backed up, where copies are kept and what a restore requires. Test restoration in an approved isolated environment and record the result. Check application access and configuration as well as restored files. A successful backup job alone does not prove that the complete business service can recover.

05

Prepare communications for review

Draft messages for staff, customers and suppliers, with placeholders for verified incident details and the next update. Assign an approver and a fallback communication channel. Store contact records with appropriate access. Do not let generated text invent an incident cause, recovery deadline, legal conclusion or assurance that data is safe.

06

Exercise the plan and correct gaps

Choose a realistic scenario with the responsible team and record the decisions it requires. Compare the planned steps with what people can actually access and perform. Assign failed or missing steps to an owner with a review date. Update the plan after the exercise and after relevant changes to systems or business arrangements.

A scenario for your next planning discussion

Suppose the system used to receive new customer work becomes unavailable during a normal working day. This is a discussion example, not a diagnosis of your business or a live incident instruction.

  1. Identify who confirms the outage and contacts the system owner or provider.
  2. Check how staff will receive and record requests through an approved alternative.
  3. Decide who approves a customer update and how the next update is scheduled.
  4. Agree how staff will find missed or duplicate requests when service returns.

Record the missing information and follow-up owner. Completing this discussion does not establish a recovery time or certify the plan.

For general preparation guidance, see business.gov.au’s emergency management plan guide. For backup verification, see ASD’s guidance on regular backups and restore testing.

Agree the scope before connecting data

Start with a defined workflow and representative examples. The proposal should identify the software, responsibilities, access and acceptance checks. Delivery time and price depend on that scope.

  • Name the plan owner, decision makers and deputies.
  • Confirm recovery objectives, provider commitments and actual test evidence.
  • Review safety, privacy, insurance and contractual requirements with the appropriate advisers.
  • Keep accessible plan copies and record exercise results, corrections and review dates.

Questions about business continuity planning

What can AI contribute to business continuity planning?

It can help organise approved documents, draft a contact or dependency register, summarise exercise notes and prepare a review checklist. People responsible for operations must verify the information and approve the response. An AI-generated plan does not demonstrate that a backup restores, a supplier can deliver or a workplace is safe.

Will a continuity plan meet our insurer’s requirements?

Ask your insurer or broker for the requirements of the actual policy and provide accurate evidence. Cover, exclusions, notification duties and assessment criteria differ. This service does not guarantee insurance eligibility, a lower premium or that a claim will be paid. Keep the insurer’s advice with the reviewed plan.

Can the work support a continuity standard or audit?

The engagement can organise documentation and evidence against a scope agreed with your responsible team and adviser. Confirm the applicable standard, edition and assessment requirements before starting. The organisation must implement and test the relevant arrangements. Producing a plan or an evidence checklist does not establish conformity or certification.

How do we decide what to restore first?

The business owner should identify essential services, their dependencies and the consequences of interruption. Record the people, information, premises, suppliers and systems needed for each service. Agree recovery priorities and acceptable interruption or data loss with the responsible stakeholders, then test whether the proposed recovery arrangement can meet those objectives.

Where are backups and planning records stored?

Storage and processing locations depend on the selected systems and providers. Review backup copies, recovery services, logs and any AI requests separately. Restrict access to contact and operational information, and keep an approved copy of the plan available if the normal network is inaccessible. Test access through the intended recovery path.

How often should we test the plan?

Agree a schedule based on your critical services, recovery objectives and relevant obligations. Also review the plan after changes to people, systems, premises or suppliers. Exercises can include restoring an approved backup in an isolated environment, checking contacts and walking through a service outage. Record the result, gaps and correction owner rather than marking an untested plan as ready.

Does the system automatically take over during an emergency?

No automatic incident response or failover is included merely by preparing a plan. Any operational automation needs a separately approved scope, access boundaries, test evidence and a person responsible for activation and recovery. The plan should identify who confirms an incident, protects people, contacts the relevant services and authorises business actions.

How should we estimate the cost of a disruption?

Use your own trading and operating records. Separate lost contribution, delayed receipts, staff and supplier costs, recovery work and any policy excess or exclusions. State the outage duration and assumptions for each scenario. Avoid treating revenue as profit or adding the same loss twice. These scenarios help prioritise planning; they are not predictions of an incident or an insurance valuation.

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