Business Crisis Management The initial steps of the business crisis management process require an understanding of the various impacts that could lead to an interruption in operations.  A systematic approach exists for conducting business impact analyses - and uncovering the priority concerns for business leaders who make rapid, effective recovery strategies part of their strategic business plan.

Business impact analysis (BIA) commences by identifying the principal systems, sub-systems and components that either describe or are utilized in manufacturing, service provisioning or in the transportation of goods and people.  The key tools, equipment, software and primary resources are carefully enumerated in a hierarchical manner to set the stage for scenario development.

As the outage or interruption scenarios are crafted and categorized by system, subsystem and component, a meaningful rating mechanism must be composed.  This risk ranking scheme consists typically of two parameters; the scenario severity and the likelihood of occurrence.  These parameters are typically set to a scale of one-to-four or five and each level is predefined and agreed upon with the management team. Severity is defined in terms of outage duration or in $ values and likelihood is described as a return rate in years or some suitable time span.

Once the risk ranking scheme is set, event scenarios are hypothesized based on plausible occurrences that relate to the industry or business activity under analysis. It is not uncommon to set up independent BIA frameworks (including dedicated rating schemes) for the various business units of the entity, i.e. one for IT, another for a specific manufacturing or service segment etc.

Armed with the completed frameworks, the analyst team works with the business subject matter experts to further elaborate the scenarios and rank them.  The BIA outputs include a priorized set of business impacts that will need to be considered for treatment options to ensure the crisis is effectively managed.  A well thought out BIA will greatly assist the entity in dealing with business interruptions and in considering and crafting continuity plans.