Business Impact Analysis
12/1/2012

The Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is the key concept used by the organization as a tool when developing Business Continuity Plans (BCP). The purpose of the BIA is to gather business information in an effort to understand the importance of the different functions of the organization (Johnson, R. (2011). It serves as the foundation for which an effective BCP can be developed and implemented. The BIA will identify and quantify business related impacts during a loss, disruption, or interruption of processes or functions within the organization. With effective implementation, the organization will be able to recover its operations under any circumstance or condition.
Component Priority In conducting you BIA some limitations should be made. In order to gather required information you should be able to schedule interviews with each department to assess critical functions within that department. It is important to interview people that know functions and processes of that department. There are two methods that can be utilized to gather information on critical processes and functions. One method would be to conduct surveys among people within each business unit. Caution should be used here as random people selected for the survey may not understand the critical functions of the business. It will, on the other hand give some insight as to what employees think are important to operations. Another method available would be to conduct interviews among people in each department. Here again, careful selection of personnel is mandatory to get an accurate depiction of those process. Selected people must know the process and functions that are critical for operations. If the decision is made to conduct interviews, the BIA team lead should generate a list of common question such as: (Fisher, P. (n.d.) *