as a proactive or preventive step. The BIA builds on existing risk analyses, regardless of whether they originate from standards such as ISO 9001, ISO 27001 or SOX. While risk assessments analyse potential threats and their likelihood, a BIA measures the severity of these threats and their impact on business performance and finances.
What is Business Impact Analysis (BIA)?
BIA is an essential part of BCM that helps organisations prepare for potential business disruptions.
However, while BCM deals with the entire process of maintaining business operations, BIA focuses on quantifying the potential economic damage of a business interruption. In particular, this involves
- Identifying time-critical business processes: Which processes are so essential to the company that their failure within a certain period of time could lead to serious, perhaps even existence-threatening damage?
- Measure the impact: This is not just about financial losses, but also about the impact on customers, reputation and market position.
- Evaluate resources: Which resources – whether personnel, IT systems or service providers – are essential to ensure the continuous execution of these critical processes?
- Identify single points of failure: Where are the weak points in the system that could cause significant business disruption in the event of a failure?
The role of the BIA in BCM
BCM serves as a holistic approach to prepare organisations for critical business interruptions and to manage them effectively. It includes measures for emergency preparedness, rapid response to outages and systematic follow-up. Within this framework, the BIA plays a crucial role: it identifies and assesses the potentially most serious effects of such interruptions. The findings from the BIA are therefore the foundation on which the BCM strategies and plans are built. Without the BIA, BCM would be like a ship without a compass, navigating the open sea without direction.
What added value does the BIA offer?
An effectively conducted BIA not only provides an assessment of the potential damage, but also valuable information on where investments in preventive measures make the most sense. Instead of blindly investing in safety measures, the BIA enables companies to make targeted investments where they will bring the greatest benefit.
