Business Impact Assessment: A business impact analysis (BIA) is the process for determining the potential impacts resulting from the interruption of time sensitive or critical business processes. (definition taken from https://www.ready.gov/risk-assessment)
Consider the Impact
The BIA should identify the operational and financial impacts resulting from the disruption of business functions and processes. (https://www.ready.gov/business-impact-analysis)
Impacts to consider include:
- Lost sales and income
- Delayed sales or income
- Increased expenses (e.g., overtime labor, outsourcing, expediting costs, etc.)
- Regulatory fines
- Contractual penalties or loss of contractual bonuses
- Customer dissatisfaction or defection
- Delay of new business plans
Business Disruption Scenarios:
- Physical damage to a building buildings
- Damage to or breakdown of machinery, systems or equipment
- Restricted access to a site or building
- Interruption of the supply chain including failure of a supplier or disruption of transportation of goods from the supplier.
- Utility outage (e.g., electrical power outage)
- Damage to, loss or corruption of information technology including voice and data communications, servers, computers, operating systems, applications, and data
- Absenteeism of essential employees
The BIA report should prioritize the order of events for restoration of the business. Business processes with the greatest operational and financial impacts should be restored first.
If businesses had these prepared prior to the Covid pandemic, it would have assisted in the process and made things run smoother for the business, employees and customers as a plan would have already been created – it may have had to be modified a bit but it would have definitely helped.
Questions to Ponder:
Did you have one of these in place prior to the pandemic?
Do you see the benefit of creating this for your business?
For assistance with this process, contact support@customizedbusinessessentials.com.
