Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

What is a Business Impact Analysis?

Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is a part of BCM and is used to identify disruptions that have an impact on business processes.

BIA is an essential part of the continuity plan. It is designed to uncover vulnerabilities and capture risk mitigation strategies. The result is a final report that describes the potential risks specific to the organisation.

Business impact analysis should not be confused with risk assessment. This often takes place before the risk assessment. The BIA is about the impact of the disruption of critical processes.

A business impact analysis consists of several steps.

Identification of critical processes

First, the important business processes and the critical infrastructure in the company are identified.

In the next step, dependencies are analysed and assessed.

Here, one measure is the “critical downtime”, which determines the time frame for how long a system can do without another system without itself failing.

Third step: Scenario development.

Scenarios are developed which show the individual threats.

This is followed by the development of measures.

Once the BIA is complete, strategies and tools should be implemented to mitigate the impact of various threats. This includes an alerting and communication system. After all, reliable alerting and information sharing is crucial to counter threats quickly and prevent damage to the company.

Thanks to our multi-channel alerting, you can reach exactly the right people via app, SMS, email and phone call. The alert can be started manually or automatically via an interface.

Which questions should be collected to analyse the business impact?

• What is the critical process?
• The process name and a detailed description of the process.
• List of all inputs and outputs of the process.
• Define the maximum allowable downtime before the impact occurs.
• Descriptions of the financial and operational impacts that occur during an outage.
• Human and technology resources needed to support the process, including computers, networks, offices, people, etc.
• A description of the impact on clients.
• An explanation of any legal or regulatory implications that may arise during an outage.
• A description of previous failures and the associated impacts.
• A description of workaround procedures or options for shifting work to other departments or external staff.

The BIA: What to consider?

A business impact analysis is important to assess risks of failure. It should be noted that the BIA report also needs to be updated, as business operations can change quickly in practice. Tools like safeREACH help to be able to react quickly to different scenarios.