Business impact analysis

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Business Impact Analysis

    Business impact analysis (BIA) is a structured process that evaluates the potential impacts of disruptions on business processes or functions. It is a key component of an organization's business continuity plan, providing insights into critical information systems and strategies to minimize risks. By conducting a BIA, businesses can make informed decisions to mitigate the effects of unforeseen events and recover effectively from setbacks.

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    Key Features

    • Structured Process: Assesses impact categories, dependencies, and predicts consequences of disruptions.
    • Risk Mitigation: Helps businesses anticipate the effects of events or decisions on operations.
    • Workflow Steps: Involves creating, reviewing, and approving the BIA through the BCM UIB Workspace.
    • Assessment Tools: Users respond to an assessment questionnaire, enabling the calculation of recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO).
    • Documentation: Approved BIAs can be archived and saved as PDFs for future reference.

    Key Outcomes

    By implementing a business impact analysis, organizations can enhance their resilience against disruptions, ensure quick recovery, and support strategic decision-making for growth. This process enables business and IT managers to prioritize resources effectively and safeguard essential business functions.

    Business impact analysis is a structured process where you assess the impact categories and dependencies and predict the consequences of a disruption on a business process or business function.

    An integral component of your business continuity plan

    A business impact analysis is an integral component of the business continuity plan for an organization. It includes information on the important information systems and a planning component that includes the strategies for minimizing your risks.

    Business managers have to make challenging decisions that can contribute to overall business growth. Sometimes, an unforeseen event or a disruption can cause disruptive effects. Performing a business impact analysis helps your business to mitigate these concerns. By evaluating the potential impact of an event or a decision, your business can predict future consequences and recover from setbacks successfully.

    For information on the use cases for business impact analysis, see Use cases for business impact analysis.

    Steps involved in creating a business impact analysis

    Creating a business impact analysis includes these steps:
    • The business impact analysis owner creates a business impact analysis either from the Home page or the business impact analysis record page in the List view of the BCM UIB Workspace.
    • The BIA owner adds additional details for the business impact analysis on the Details tab.
    • Different users of the BCM application respond to the assessment questionnaire for the business impact analysis on the Assessment tab.
    • Based on the responses received, the BCM application calculates the recovery time objective (RTO), recovery point objective (RPO), and dependencies for the business impact analysis.
    • The business impact analysis owner reviews the information and submits the analysis for a review and approval to the business manager for services or IT manager for applications respectively.
    • The business manager, IT manager, or BCM lead review the details of the business impact analysis and approve or reject it.
    • An approved business impact analysis is moved to Approved and later, it is moved to the Archived state.
    • The business impact analysis owner can generate the PDF of the analysis and save a copy for reference.

    A typical business impact analysis workflow is shown in the examples:

    BIA workflow.

    BIA workflow for different roles.

    Setup tasks for the business impact analysis administrator

    If you are the business impact analysis administrator, you can view Setup for a business impact analysis for information on the setup tasks.

    Creating a business impact analysis in Business Continuity Workspace

    if you are the business impact analysis owner, you can create a business impact analysis in Business Continuity Workspace by using one of these options:
    • You can navigate to the Business impact analysis tab in the Home page and select Create BIA as shown in the example.

      Create BIA from the Home page.

      For the description of the cards and action buttons in the Business impact analysis tab of the Home page, see Home page view.

    • You can also navigate to the List view and select New in the Business Impact Analysis records as shown in the example.

      Create BIA from the record page in the List view.

    To create a business impact analysis in Business Continuity Workspace, see Create a business impact analysis. For information on managing the tasks that are related to a business impact analysis, see Structured workflows for BIAs.