Impact categories and ratings

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Impact categories and ratings

    Impact categories and ratings in Business Continuity Management (BCM) allow organizations to assess the effects of downtime during a disruptive event. BCM administrators define these categories and related timeframes to help determine key recovery objectives—Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO)—for critical assets.

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    This functionality enables organizations to classify impacts broadly and configure specific categories and ratings tailored to their business services, processes, or applications.

    Impact Categories

    Impact categories represent the types of consequences an organization may face during downtime. Common broad classifications include:

    • Legal impact: Legal issues like lawsuits or fines.
    • Regulatory impact: Effects due to regulatory changes or new policies.
    • Reputation impact: Damage to brand image or reputation.
    • Revenue impact: Financial losses or reduced income.
    • Workforce impact: Employee-related effects such as increased attrition or low morale.

    BCM administrators can view pre-installed impact categories with demo data and create or modify categories in the Impact categories module. When configuring an impact category, administrators specify:

    • Name: Identifies the impact category (e.g., Legal, Reputational).
    • Contribution: Indicates if the impact affects RTO or RPO.
    • Applicable timeframes: Defines the relevant duration for the impact.
    • Maximum RTO value: Sets the upper limit for recovery time.
    • Description and helper text: Provides context and guidance to users during assessments.

    Impact Ratings

    Impact ratings provide detailed assessments within each impact category. BCM administrators can view demo ratings and define custom ratings in the Impact ratings module. When configuring an impact rating, the following details are set:

    • Name: Unique identifier for the rating.
    • Impact Category: The category to which the rating belongs.
    • Value: Unique numerical value for the rating, ensuring no duplicates.
    • Tolerable: Option to mark the rating as tolerable for RTO-impacting categories.
    • Description and question text: Explains the rating and customizes the assessment question shown in the Business Impact Analysis (BIA) form.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    By leveraging impact categories and ratings, BCM administrators can systematically capture and quantify the effects of service disruptions across legal, regulatory, reputational, financial, and workforce dimensions. This structured approach facilitates accurate recovery planning and prioritization.

    Configuring these elements within ServiceNow BCM ensures that business impact analyses are consistent, clear, and actionable, enabling organizations to define realistic RTO and RPO targets and improve resilience against downtime events.

    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

    When a business service, process, or application experiences downtime due to a disruptive event, its impact can be classified in various broad 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 impact categories installed with demo data and create categories in the Impact categories module. The example shows the impact categories that are installed with demo data in an instance.

    BIA impact categories that are installed with demo data.

    Configuration of an impact category

    The BCM administrators can configure or modify the impact categories by adding key information about the impact. The example shows the configuration details of an impact category in an instance.

    Details of the legal impact category.

    The BCM administrators can configure the details of a new impact category:
    Name
    Classification of the downtime impact for your service, process, or applications through an appropriate name such as Legal or Reputational impact.
    Contributes to
    Selection of whether the impact contributes to recovery time objective or recovery point objective.
    Applicable timeframes
    Timeframe specification for the impact category.
    Maximum RTO value
    Maximum RTO value for the impact category.
    Description
    Description field for the impact category.
    Helper text

    Helper text that provides a hint to 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 example, "Select an estimated time for each impact level" is the helper text for the impact category.

    Helper text in the Impact Rating record.

    Impact category configuration by BCM administrators

    For more information on how to configure an impact category with the sn_bcm.admin role, see Configure impact category for BIA.

    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.

    Impact ratings that are installed with demo data.

    The impact ratings for an impact category are shown in the example.

    Impact ratings for an impact category.

    Configuration of an impact rating

    The BCM administrators can configure details of an impact rating for the business impact analysis:
    Name
    Unique name to the impact rating.
    Impact Category
    Classification of the impact category that the impact rating is associated with.
    Value
    Unique numerical value to each impact rating. The same value can not be reused for any other impact rating in the BCM application.
    Tolerable
    Option for enabling the RTO impact as tolerable. This check box appears only if the impact category contributes to the recovery time objective.
    Description
    Description about the impact rating.
    Question text
    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 impact ratings.