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 used to assess the impact categories and dependencies of business processes or functions. It enables organizations to predict the consequences of disruptions, forming a critical part of the overall business continuity plan. By identifying important information systems and developing strategies to minimize risks, BIA helps businesses prepare for and recover from unforeseen events effectively.

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    Key Features

    • Integration with Business Continuity Plan: BIA contains essential details about critical systems and recovery strategies to support business resilience.
    • Assessment Process: Multiple users contribute by responding to assessment questionnaires, helping calculate key metrics such as Recovery Time Objective (RTO), Recovery Point Objective (RPO), and dependencies.
    • Review and Approval Workflow: The BIA owner submits the analysis for review and approval by business managers, IT managers, or BCM leads, ensuring oversight and validation.
    • Lifecycle Management: Approved BIAs are tracked through states including Approved and Archived, enabling proper documentation and governance.
    • Reporting: BIAs can be exported as PDFs for reference and documentation purposes.
    • Creation Options in Business Continuity Workspace: BIAs can be created via the Home page Business impact analysis tab or through the List view, providing flexible access points for users.

    Practical Use for ServiceNow Customers

    ServiceNow customers leveraging the BCM application can use BIA to systematically evaluate business risks and recovery priorities. The process helps identify dependencies and impact metrics critical for effective continuity planning. The structured workflow supports collaboration among stakeholders, ensuring thorough assessment and governance. Administrators have dedicated setup tasks to configure the BIA process, while BIA owners can easily create and manage analyses within Business Continuity Workspace.

    By implementing BIA in ServiceNow, organizations gain a proactive mechanism to mitigate disruption risks, prioritize recovery efforts, and maintain business resilience aligned with industry best practices.

    Business impact analysis is a structured process where you assess the impact categories and dependencies. You can then 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 from the List view.
    • 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 an analysis for a review and approval to the business manager for services or IT manager for applications.
    • 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.