Business impact analysis (BIA) templates

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Business Impact Analysis (BIA) Templates

    The Business Continuity Management (BCM) application provides pre-configured Business Impact Analysis (BIA) templates, enabling BCM or BIA administrators to efficiently create business impact analyses. The BIA Templates module allows users to select template types, elements, and impact categories tailored to their organization’s needs.

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    Key Features

    • Simplification: BIA templates streamline the creation process, making it easier for administrators.
    • Time and Resource Savings: Templates come pre-populated with essential information, reducing the need for manual entry.
    • Primary Object Type Definition: Users can specify the primary element for the BIA, such as IT applications.
    • Automatic Dependency Population: Dependency groups are automatically included, enhancing the analysis accuracy.
    • Customizable Impact Categories: Administrators can select relevant impact categories specific to their organization.

    Key Outcomes

    Using BIA templates allows for a comprehensive assessment of business processes, including financial and legal impacts of potential downtimes. With the snbcm.admin role, administrators can configure templates by setting names, descriptions, assessed elements, impact categories, and identifying dependencies. Additionally, the templates facilitate the inclusion of Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA) information for critical data assessments. Dependency groups are organized into categories such as Applications, Hardware, Software, and more, allowing for tailored management of dependencies within the analysis.

    The Business Continuity Management application provides pre-configured business impact analysis (BIA) templates for creating a business impact analysis. If you are the BCM or BIA administrator, you can use the BIA Templates module in the Business Continuity Management application. You can then select the type of the template, elements, impact categories, and so on, for the business impact analysis.

    Advantages of using a BIA template

    The BIA templates store information such as the impact categories and dependency groups that a business process depends on. Using a BIA template offers these advantages:
    • Simplifies the process of creating a business impact analysis.
    • Saves time and resources by pre-populating the templates.
    • Helps you to define the primary object type that you can use the BIA template for. For example, you can use the Application technical impact analysis template to perform a technical impact analysis of an IT application.
    • Populates the dependency groups automatically in the BIA.
    • Helps you to select the impact categories that are relevant to your organization.

    BIA templates in BCM

    If you have the sn_bcm.admin role, you can view the BIA templates that are installed with demo data when you install the application or configure a BIA template in the BIA Templates module. The example shows the BIA templates that are installed with demo data in the Business Continuity Management application.

    BIA templates that are installed with demo data.

    BIA template configuration

    With the sn_bcm.admin role, you can configure these details in the BIA template:
    Name and Description
    Use the Name and Description fields to search for the name and select an appropriate template for your business impact analysis.
    Primary Element Assessed
    Select the type of the elements that you plan to assess such as Business processes or CI service.
    Impact Categories
    Assess specific impact categories during the business impact analysis. For example, you plan to assess the financial impact and legal impact of a downtime.
    Dependency Assessments
    Identify the dependencies for your business impact analysis.
    Include CIA
    Include CIA (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability) information in your business impact analysis if the primary element being analyzed has critical data.

    The example shows the sample configuration of a BIA template in an instance.

    Configuration of a BIA template.

    Configuring a BIA template

    For more information on how to configure a BIA template with the sn_bcm.admin role, see Configure BIA templates with legacy assessment.

    Impact dependency groups

    The BIA template used for creating a business impact analysis has dependency groups associated with it. When conducting an assessment, the dependency groups are automatically populated in the BIA. You can view them as Applications, Hardware, Software, Vendors, Workplaces, and others, each in its own container depending on how many of these groups are associated to the template.

    Dependency groups.

    Each of them is a dependency group and you can add or remove items that belong to each group within its container.