An increasing number of business professionals are engaging consultants and internal teams to begin planning for continuity issues. Most start with a Business Impact Analysis, or BIA, in order to identify recovery objectives. Few question the importance of the BIA - the end result is a key, foundational product that adds clarity to all subsequent planning phases. However, the BIA can become a difficult task if the project team is singularly focused on quantifying loss potential, with the objective of reaching definitive conclusions regarding revenue loss. If this is the expectation, there will most likely be disappointment at the end of the BIA.

Instead, a more realistic end product (and a more balanced analysis) would include intangible impacts, and other estimated results following a business interruption. Reputational impairment and market share loss are two impacts that are clearly driving executive manager decision-making. Both are not covered by other risk transfer products (specifically insurance), and both have long-term implications.

Overall, a well-executed BIA is essential to developing and implementing efficient and effective response and recovery strategies. However, the identification of appropriate recovery objectives is the most important end product, not the justification of each recovery objective. As a result, estimating quantifiable impacts, and describing intangible impacts, is an effective approach - as opposed to identifying hard and fast revenue implications alone.