Business Impact Analysis, Business Impact Assessment

Advanced Business Impact Analysis Training (BC-301)

Sentryx’s BC-301 (Advanced Business Impact Analysis) 1-day training course is specifically designed to prepare students to conduct an effective business impact analysis and develop the skills of students to enable them to successfully manage and coordinate a busines impact analysis project.

This one day intensive business impact analysis course assumes that students have no prior knowledge of and/or experience in business continuity planning or disaster recovery planning and have never conducted a business impact assessment.

What is a Business Impact Analysis?

The Business Impact Analysis ( business impact assessment ), is an essential part of the business continuity planning process that helps a business understand its financial and operational exposures in the event of an interruption. The business impact assessment identifies mission-critical areas and business processes that are critical to the survival of business. Overall, the business impact analysis raises senior management ’s awareness of undesirable consequences and potential operational risk, which helps to justify the need for a business continuity plan.

A Business Impact Analysis Helps Organizations:

Identify and prioritize recovery of mission critical business functions and processes.
Identify requirements for recovery such as critical IT systems, applications, vital records, equipment and resources.
Identify the extent of financial impact to business in terms of monetary losses such as lost sales, lost funding, and contractual penalties.
Identify the extent of operational impact to business in terms non-monetary losses related to business operations such as competitive edge, damage to investor confidence, poor customer service, low staff morale, and damage tobusiness reputation.

To enable a business to successfully recover from a disaster, it is crucial for a business to conduct a comprehensive and effective business impact assessment. A comprehensive business impact assessment will ensure that a business will develop a suitable business continuity strategy and effective business continuity plan. Therefore, a company’s internal business impact analysis team should possess expert knowledge and skills to conduct all business impact analysis activities.

BC-301 (Advanced Business Impact Analysis) Outline

BC-301 is divided into three main components. The first part consists of a presentation of business impact analysis topics. The second part focuses on BIA templates. The third part is a workshop devoted to a detailed case study of a business impact assessment of an example organization.

Part 1:

In the business impact analysis course the presentation topics include the following:

Business impact analysis purpose, objectives, and scope

Business impact analysis deliverables and sponsorship

Business impact assessment project initiation

Business impact assessment cost, effort, and justification

Organizing an effective BIA team

Business impact assessment optimization strategy

Key business impact analysis concepts and terminologies

Collecting background information

Data collection methods

Business impact assessment interview and workshop techniques

Defining accurate and consistent terminologies

Business impact analysis critical success factors

Role of IT/Non-IT resources and services in a BIA

Role of work-around procedures in a BIA

Measuring impact of business interruption

Key business impact indicators

Understanding Business impact assessment process flow and activities

Preparing business impact assessment questionnaires

Controlling and leading business impact analysis interviews and workshops

Reviewing and customizing Business impact assessment templates

Business impact assessment template input, output, and data analysis component

Assignment of business impact analysis activities to team members

Desk review of business impact analysis responses

Resolving data inconsistencies and inaccuracies

Business impact assessment report preparation process

Business impact analysis report presentation

Part 2:

Students will conduct a detailed walk-through of business impact analysis steps and templates. Students will learn to customize templates to suite their own organization impact analysis.

Part 3:

Students will participate in a detailed case study of a business impact assessment for an example organization. Students will apply the BIA concepts and steps from Part 1 and use the templates from Part 2 in Part 3. Part 3 provides a realistic and practical scenario that will enable students to conduct a business impact analysis in their own organization.