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[IMAGE] [IMAGE] Your BIA Survival Guide [IMAGE]
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When it comes to the mechanics of writing a BIA—formatting, organization of data and cataloguing business information—there are many methods from which to choose. Keeping the following goals in mind when writing the document will make it easy to use and facilitate ongoing maintenance:

Readability—The sheer amount of data in a BIA can make it difficult for a reader to quickly find specific information—unless the format encourages rapid lookup. Providing a by-subject index and/or detailed table of contents can mean the difference between readers finding content quickly and giving up on the BIA as an information source.

Maintainability—A document is only useful as long as the information within it is current. Take measures to ensure that the document receives periodic updates or input from other activities. The document format itself can encourage updates: Soft-copy artifacts written in Microsoft Word or Excel are much easier to keep updated than paper copies, file formats that require special tools to modify such as PDF or Visio, or documents that are incorporated by reference.

Comprehensiveness—The more data that is included in the BIA—such as IP addresses associated with critical servers and software packages used to support business—the more ...

BIA Basics
Business impact analysis is used within business continuity planning (BCP) to refer to a systematic process of measuring, analyzing and documenting how various business functions are affected by outages—both as individual processes and for the company as a whole.

The goal of the BIA is to allow a business to understand how its various revenue-generating and support organizations operate and interact. Firms can then develop a more accurate picture of which areas of the business will be hit hardest by disruptions and how failures in one area of the business could cause other parts to fail.

At the end of a BIA project, organizations should understand which processes are most critical to keeping the firm running. This allows them to prioritize investments in preparedness, orchestrate continuity activities and implement contingency measures for the most critical systems to reduce the impact of a disruption.

The key to getting maximum value from a BIA is to encourage wide distribution, high visibility and flex- ibility in a way that makes the guide easy to use and maintain. (See "Your BIA Survival Guide," opposite.)

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