Free Business Impact Analysis Templates

In a business, unexpected problems frequently arise, but having a solid plan in place to combat these issues will maintain the company’s processes and ensure continued success. A BIA records and documents the processes needed to run a business, as well as the resources and equipment required to operate efficiently. Additionally, it provides your staff with the skills and knowledge needed to continue operations, even in the case of an unanticipated impact. An impact assessment is also beneficial in keeping external stakeholders informed while maintaining all legal, financial, and customer obligations that a company must meet.

By accruing all of the variables needed to maintain normal business procedures, a company can determine the length of time they can survive without any diversions. This information helps prevent ripple effects from occurring across departments and quarantines a problem when it arises within only the area it initially affects. The technology and service recovery times can be assessed and solved independently across operations, accommodating specific systems within a business. As a result, the company directly improves all scope planning, execution of processes, and stakeholder awareness.

There are some tips to successfully adopting and implementing a BIA in a company in order to determine component and recovery criticality. These tips include the following:

• Lean in to the Support of Senior Management and Stakeholders: Take all ideas and opinions into consideration as you develop your BIA to ensure you cover all of your bases. Each business process leads to another, and keeping that circulation of productivity in mind will help you create the most comprehensive impact assessment and establish trust between upper executives while maintaining the rate of work.
• Take the BIA Procedure Seriously: Planning in advance for unexpected events can save your company valuable time, money, and stress — that is, if your BIA is done thoughtfully and correctly. Take the time to identify and prioritize system components to accurately determine outage impacts and estimated downtimes and assess the cost of any and all business disruptions. You can effectively solve any single point of failure within the business when your BIA addresses all areas.
• Remember — There Are No Formal BIA Standards: No two BIAs are the same across companies, no incident descriptions match up exactly, and what works for one business may not work as well for another. Keep this in mind as you establish an impact analysis that is unique and effective for your company’s critical success factors.
• Keep It Simple, but Targeted: Create a form that is easy to navigate, distinguishes key variables, and results in a holistic impact analysis. Make sure you tailor the form for each business unit, and the effects one specific impact could have over another company unit. Change the control process for each appropriate business arm in order to target and maintain all unforeseen impacts that have potential for harm.
• Review Results with All Business Units: Keep communication open across business units, and make sure the form is cross-functional. Ensure that the BIA covers all business processes throughout the company by amassing detailed data collection and allocation of system resources.
• Maintain Flexibility: BIAs are part of a contingency planning process that establishes the most critical functions within a company through system identification. However, identifying resource requirements and recovery priorities for those resources is a hard task. Make sure to share accountability and ask for involvement from all business units, keeping in mind that the end goal is a cohesive BIA that supports all unforeseen events across all subprocesses.