Crisis Management Days

From AI-driven business crisis to resilience: applying AI and digital tools for business continuity in a small web agency – the Studio Zona case

(case study of a small Croatian web agency)

Ivica Delic

Studio Zona

Keywords: business continuity, small service firms, artificial intelligence, crisis management, web agencies

Abstract

Small service businesses that sell knowledge work get hit hard when their clients jump to AI tools. That is exactly what happened to Studio Zona, a small Croatian web agency, when several long-term foreign clients cancelled contracts and moved their work into AI driven internal systems. This paper walks through that situation as a case study and shows how AI and simple digital tools can help spot trouble early, limit the damage, and reshape the business instead of letting it fold. I look at the crisis period step by step and compare the state of the business before and after key changes, using things like delivery time, incident response time, and the mix of income sources. In response, Studio Zona combined AI helpers for thinking and writing, fast AI based prototyping of websites, automated monitoring and alerts for client sites, and layered backup routines. After these changes, prototype sites went out faster, technical problems were found and fixed sooner, client messages in tense moments were clearer, and part of the lost income was replaced with new AI related services. So, the paper gives a practical, real-world blueprint for other small service shops that need to live through an AI shock and come out more stable on the other side.