[MTE] [Mar 2026] [Lesson Learned] Smarter Crisis Decisions with AI

Lessons Learned from “Smarter Crisis Decisions with AI: The Next Step in BCM”

The presentation by Sirilah Raman, Head of BCM (VP), Bank Simpanan Nasional, offered an important message for business continuity and crisis management professionals: AI is not the decision-maker, but it can become one of the most valuable decision-support tools in BCM.

The session as not about replacing crisis managers with technology. Instead, it showed how AI can help organisations process information faster, detect risks earlier, and improve the quality and speed of response throughout the BCM lifecycle.

The real lesson is that BCM teams should stop viewing AI as a distant innovation and start seeing it as a practical capability that can strengthen resilience when applied carefully and responsibly.

Summary of Part 1

The first article highlighted the strategic lesson that AI fits naturally into BCM because crises overwhelm people with too much information, too little time, and constant pressure from stakeholders. In such moments, human judgment remains essential, but human capacity is limited. AI helps by organising data, surfacing patterns, and making complex information easier to interpret. This means the real value of AI is not authority, but support. It improves situational awareness and gives crisis leaders more time and clarity to decide what to do next.

Another lesson from the first article is that AI should not be limited to incident response alone. Its usefulness stretches across the entire BCM lifecycle, from pre-crisis preparation to post-crisis review. It can strengthen BIA, risk assessment, interdependency analysis, documentation improvement, and management reporting. The presentation also made an important practical point: organisations do not need to begin with expensive, sophisticated AI programmes. Many can start by using tools they already own, such as Microsoft-based automation and analytics capabilities, to improve data consolidation and insight generation. The lesson here is simple: start small, start practical, and use AI to improve the quality of existing BCM work.

A further lesson is that the changing risk landscape demands a new mindset. Traditional BCM has often focused on what to do after a disruption. AI supports the shift toward a more proactive and preventive resilience model. By analysing risks, signals, and trends earlier, it can help organisations move from reactive recovery to earlier detection and smarter preparation. Yet even with that shift, accountability still belongs to humans. AI brings speed and consistency, but people bring ethics, empathy, context, and final judgment. That balance is one of the most important lessons from the session.

Summary of Part 2

The second article focused more on operational lessons and real-world application. One major takeaway is that AI delivers value when it solves everyday BCM problems. In many organisations, BIA exercises still involve multiple spreadsheets, inconsistent definitions, laborious consolidation, and long delays before analysis is ready for management. AI and automation can streamline this work by cleaning data, connecting dependencies, and extracting more useful findings from the information already collected. The lesson is that AI can turn BCM from an administrative burden into a more analytical and value-adding function.

Another lesson is the importance of early warning and monitoring. During cyber incidents, system outages, or third-party failures, organisations often lose precious time waiting for confirmation that something is wrong. AI-powered monitoring can identify abnormalities, suspicious activity, or missing transaction patterns earlier than conventional escalation routes. This is especially relevant for sectors with heavy dependence on outsourced providers, digital services, and interconnected supply chains. The lesson is that resilience now depends not only on having a recovery plan, but also on having better visibility into what may be going wrong before an incident fully escalates.

The article also showed that crisis communication can benefit significantly from AI. Reputational crises unfold quickly, especially on social media, and organisations need to respond with speed. AI can help draft initial responses, structure key messages, and accelerate communication workflows. But the lesson here is also a caution: customers in distress still need human empathy. AI can help prepare a response, but it should not be allowed to replace human sensitivity in high-stress situations. In BCM, communication is not only about speed; it is also about trust.

Finally, the second article underscored the risks of AI itself. Poor-quality data, biased outputs, silent errors, and over-reliance can all create false confidence and lead to bad decisions. This is perhaps one of the most important lessons of all: AI is powerful, but it must be governed. It should be introduced gradually, validated carefully, and used within a controlled framework, especially when sensitive operational or customer information is involved. Effective AI use in BCM requires discipline, not enthusiasm alone.

The Final Takeaway?

The final takeaway from the presentation is that the future of BCM is not human versus AI, but human with AI. AI will not replace crisis managers, business continuity professionals, or leadership teams. What it will do is help them work faster, analyse better, and respond more confidently in increasingly complex disruption scenarios. Organisations that use AI well will be able to improve both routine BCM activities and live crisis decision-making.

The broader lesson is that BCM practitioners should begin now, but with care. Start with practical use cases such as BIA consolidation, risk analysis, monitoring, and crisis communication support. Use existing tools where possible. Validate outputs. Keep governance strong. Most importantly, preserve human judgment at the centre of every critical decision. AI can elevate resilience, but only when it is applied thoughtfully, responsibly, and as part of a well-governed BCM programme.

Dr Goh Moh Heng, President of BCM Institute, summarises this webinar. If you have any questions, please speak to the author.