This week we will cover the Top 10 Tips for a Business Impact Analysis
1. Use a Business Process focused approach – Focusing on Business Processes will show what effects a disruption will have on the business by identifying the functions essential for business survival as well as key interdependencies.
2. Measure financial / non-financial impact categories – Measure the dollar and non-dollar impacts of not performing a business process over time.
3. Weight importance of financial and non-financial impact categories – Weight each category of impact based on importance (e.g., Loss of Revenue – 20%, Impact to Customer Service – 15%).
4. Utilize revenue based financial impact scale – Create an scale that reflects minor to catastrophic financial impacts specific to your company’s revenue.
5. One on one interviews yield the most success – Prepare the participants with a pre-interview form, then use the one on one interviews to talk through and review the data.
6. Complete BIA interviews in 2.5 hours or less – Focused meetings minimizing digression can yield the best results for the duration of the interview.
7. Validate results with a small team – Going through the results with a few knowledgeable people can help validate that the results truly reflect the impacts of an event.
8. Update annually for critical business units – Technology, functions, dependencies, and methods can change year over year. It is important to keep Management and the BC Office and Plans updated on which Business process/groups will have the biggest impact to the business.
9. Align BIA results with the business and IT – The goal is a business continuity plan that recovers your business as well as your systems.
10. Gain management approval via signature – Having management sign off BIA results will further validate results are in line with the business and management goals.
Next week … Top 10 Tips for a Crisis Management Team
Michael Herrera
Michael Herrera is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MHA. In his role, Michael provides global leadership to the entire set of industry practices and horizontal capabilities within MHA. Under his leadership, MHA has become a leading provider of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery services to organizations on a global level. He is also the founder of BCMMETRICS, a leading cloud based tool designed to assess business continuity compliance and residual risk. Michael is a well-known and sought after speaker on Business Continuity issues at local and national contingency planner chapter meetings and conferences. Prior to founding MHA, he was a Regional VP for Bank of America, where he was responsible for Business Continuity across the southwest region.
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