Impact categories and ratings
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Summary of Impact Categories and Ratings
Impact categories are essential for assessing the effects of downtime during a business impact analysis (BIA). The BCM administrator is responsible for defining these categories and their associated timeframes, which are crucial for determining recovery objectives for organizational assets.
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Key Features
- Broad Classification: Impacts can be classified into categories such as Legal, Regulatory, Reputation, Revenue, and Workforce impacts.
- Impact Category Configuration: Administrators can create and modify impact categories, including naming, applicable timeframes, and maximum recovery time objective (RTO) values.
- Impact Ratings: Administrators can define impact ratings, including unique names, numerical values, and descriptions for each rating associated with impact categories.
Key Outcomes
By effectively configuring impact categories and ratings, organizations can better assess the potential effects of disruptive events, streamline recovery processes, and enhance overall business continuity management. This structured approach helps ensure that critical business functions are maintained during adverse conditions, ultimately safeguarding the organization’s reputation and financial stability.
Impact categories are the types of an impact that you can assess during a business impact analysis. The BCM administrator of an organization is responsible for defining the impact categories and the timeframe during which an organization may experience a downtime. This information is used to determine the recovery time objective and recovery point objective of the assets.
Broad classification of the impact categories
- Legal impact: Classified as an impact with legal implications such as a civil lawsuit or fines that result from a service disruption.
- Regulatory impact: Classified as an impact due to a change in the existing regulation or the introduction of a new policy.
- Reputation impact: Classified as an impact to the brand image and reputation of a company.
- Revenue impact: Classified as an impact due to financial losses or low revenues.
- Workforce impact: Classified as an impact of a disruptive event on the workforce. For example, a company experiences an increased attrition rate and low employee morale post the pandemic.
Impact categories in BCM
With the BCM administrator role, you can view the impact categories that are installed with demo data and set up new impact categories in the Impact categories module of the BCM application. The following example shows the impact categories that are installed with demo data in an instance.
Configuration of an impact category
The BCM administrators can configure or modify the impact categories by adding key information about the impact. The following example shows the configuration details of an impact category in an instance.
- Name
- Classify the impact of a downtime for your service, process, or applications by adding an appropriate name for the impact such as Legal or Reputational impact.
- Contributes to
- Select whether the impact contributes to recovery time objective or recovery point objective.
- Applicable timeframes
- Set the applicable timeframe for the impact category.
- Maximum RTO value
- Define the maximum RTO value for the impact category.
- Description
- Add description for the impact category.
- Helper text
- Add the helper text that provides a hint to the users on how to respond to the assessment questions. The helper text is then displayed for the user in the business impact analysis record. In the following example,
Select an estimated time for each impact level is the helper text for the impact category.
Impact category configuration by the administrators
For more information on how to configure an impact category with the sn_bcm.admin role, see Configure an impact category for the business impact analysis.
Impact ratings in BCM
If you have the BCM administrator role, you can view the impact ratings that are installed with demo data and define specific impact ratings in the Impact ratings module. The following example shows the impact ratings that are installed with demo data for an impact category.
The impact ratings for an impact category are shown in the following example.
Configuration of an impact rating
- Name
- Assign a unique name to the impact rating.
- Impact Category
- Classify the impact category that the impact rating is associated with.
- Value
- Assign a unique numerical value to each impact rating. The same value can not be reused for any other impact rating in the BCM application.
- Tolerable
- Select the option for enabling the RTO impact as tolerable. This check box appears only if the impact category contributes to the recovery time objective.
- Description
- Add the description about the impact rating.
- Question text
- Revise the question text in the Impact Rating record for the recovery time objective of an impact category. The revised question is then displayed in the RTO assessment form of the business impact analysis record.
Impact rating configuration by the administrators
For more information on how to configure an impact rating with the sn_bcm.admin role, see Configure an impact rating to assess the impact category.