What is the purpose of Business Impact Analysis?
A business will never get anywhere if it does not prepare for risk. Whether it is the more mundane risk associated with supply chain issues, demand crises and technological change, or more exotic dangers such as the recent coronavirus pandemic, the company that is prepared will be in a much stronger long-term position than one that isn’t.
The classic case for impact analysis is where an organization wishes to understand the potential effect of taking a server offline or bringing an application down. In other words, what are the business functions and business processes that will be affected if a certain part of the IT infrastructure is no longer available (either temporarily, or permanently)?
There are several reasons why this question might be asked. At a tactical level, a software upgrade or preventative maintenance on hardware might involve downtime and an awareness of what the business impact of such downtime would be is of obvious value. At the same time, strategic projects such as application portfolio consolidation initiatives, or datacenter migrations, need to know which business functions will need to be dealt with when they take applications offline.
While most businesses will have some capacity to deal with shocks and plan ahead, an impact analysis has crucial advantages. Formal analysis scenarios and reports can reduce the difficulties faced by novice firms and enterprise architects, while giving key stakeholders a much greater understanding of the process and its outcomes. Traditional business tools such as SWOT analysis are still fine for getting a grip on risk, but a BIA report is clear, quantifiable and detailed.