Business Impact Analysis
“41% of CEOs, risk managers and other industry experts cite business interruption as their biggest risk.”
— Allianz Risk Barometer 2021
Business Impact Analysis is Key to Business Continuity! Without the BIA, creating the rest of the plan would be best-guess or simply random. Has your company done a thorough Business Impact Analysis?
- Overview
A Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is a process that allows us to identify critical business functions and predict the consequences a disruption of one of those functions would have.
Gartner defines “A business impact analysis (BIA) is the process of determining the criticality of business activities and associated resource requirements to ensure operational resilience and continuity of operations during and after a business disruption. The BIA quantifies the impacts of disruptions on service delivery, risks to service delivery, and recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs). These recovery requirements are then used to develop strategies, solutions and plans.”
ISO 22317 is the first and the only standard which solely addresses analysis of impacts of disruption to determine resumption priorities. It is designed to complement ISO 22301; nonetheless, it can be used as a stand-alone standard.
By conducting a comprehensive Business Impact Analysis, your organization will ascertain the scope of your business continuity program, determine your contractual, legal, and regulatory obligations, give clarity on business continuity strategy and encompass preliminary plan content.
- Approach
At Seven Step Consulting we believe that a solid business impact analysis (BIA) is the vital first step key to starting your business continuity program right.
Our clients will tell you we provide the best results for getting your business impact analysis right the first time using the guidelines for business impact analysis (BIA) provided by ISO 22317. Our experts will help your organization to establish, implement, and maintain a formal and documented business impact analysis (BIA) process and demystify the same.
Seven Step Consulting experts will help:
- Identify activities supporting how a business provides products and services
- Assess how not performing those products and services over time will impact the organization including financial, legal, regulatory and reputational impacts both direct and indirect.
- Plan and set priorities and timeframes for business resumption at a minimum acceptable level
- Estimate the resources required for resumption.
- Identify the connection and dependencies between supporting resources for the impacted value of BIA
- Benefits
Stated another way, the value of our BIA is that it ensures the most cost-effective strategies by focusing on the correct business continuity requirements. Moreover, BIA provides evidence to company managers that business continuity aligns with organizational objectives and strategies.
- Helps achieve a better understanding and determination of the actual business impact of multiple disruptive scenarios.
- Helps identify interdependencies between key business processes.
- Improvements in interface between departments and groups along with a better understanding of their role within the organization.
- Identifications of key IT functions, often with critical business dependency and a better understanding of the nature and complexity (or lack thereof) of the IT and recovery processes.
- Develops an understanding of actual applications and systems used being used in the company along with a better understanding of their importance.
- Gaps in IT recovery and business availably/recovery requirements are eliminated.
- Identification of potential issues or gaps in regulatory compliance and reduction of potential fines related to regulatory requirements.
- Deliverables
Some key outcomes of the business impact analysis (BIA) are
- Gather information needed to develop recovery strategies and limit the potential loss.
- Assess the risks of a disaster on the organization.
- Allow for each department within your organization to explain and discuss how an unexpected event would affect their business function.
- Prioritize specific functions through the use of Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO).
REACH US TO ENSURE THAT WHEN EVEN WHEN A CRISIS STRIKES, YOUR BUSINESS MUST GO ON AS USUAL.