This is a sample roadmap of questions asked prior to, during, and after the BIA phase.
Critical Business Functions (CBFs) refer to the most vital areas of the business that are crucial to the survival of the organisation as a viable enterprise.
Without these business functions, the organisation would not be profitable, credible, or viable in delivering products and/or services to customers, clients, or the citizenry, in the case of governmental entities.
A BIA drives the priorities, strategies, and solutions for managing BC and recovery.
It is important because the BC planning effort and its decisions must be weighed against projected needs and costs to ensure they satisfy those needs and are cost-effective.
The underlying premise that supports the BIA as the foundation of a viable BCP project is that the BIA data must be valid. To be valid, all entities in the organisation must actively participate in the BIA process.
The data they provide must reflect current operations and be updated as new business functions/or technology platforms and IT applications are implemented.
By helping identify functions critical to business survival, you will be able to focus on what counts most.
The BIA process also helps the whole organisation get involved in BCP. It helps each Head of BU evaluate operations and assign a dollar value to downtime. It also identifies the equipment and resources needed to keep CBFs going.
In summary, undertaking a BIA is a self-evaluation process that leads your business to discover:
Based on the various considerations uncovered during the BIA, the process itself can be almost as beneficial as the final written BC plan.
I often list the following benefits derived from performing a comprehensive BIA to highlight the following areas of importance or concern in an organisation:
The following are additional reasons that would accrue from a well-developed BIA:
The short answer is the sooner, the better, once your organisation undergoes significant changes. The two main scenarios prompting a revisit are:
As your business changes, plans must be updated to reflect its current status.
For example, you would want to update your BIA and plan to tie in with a significant strategic or structural change in your organisation. An example is a major move into e-commerce. When moving the sales channel to the Web, what happens if your server crashes?
In most organisations, however, changes are frequent rather than drastic, with new business activities and technologies constantly being introduced.
With each introduction of a new business operation, IT application, system, or network, an assessment should be conducted to determine where the new business function fits within the recovery priorities.
Mergers and acquisitions within organisations warrant an update. It is recommended that these updates be conducted three months after the successful completion of the exercise.
The frequency of reassessing the business impact depends on the frequency of change within the organisation. If the organisation is relatively stable, the reassessment can be less frequent.
Many organisations conduct a corporate-wide BIA at least once every two years. The factors that determine the impact of the loss of a particular function in the organisation are expected to change over time. For example, the volume of business transactions may have increased.
BU BCM Coordinators are expected to inform the Organisational BCM Coordinator of any changes once the BU’s update is complete.
There is a common argument that the Risk Analysis & Review phase should come first, while another set of professionals argues that the BIA phase should come first as the 2nd Subject Area of the ten professional practices.
The need to argue on the sequence reflects a lack of understanding on the practical aspect of implementing BC plans as the quest to be correct on its sequencing is academic.
Extracted from "Chapter 4: Frequently Asked Questions"
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