Disaster Recovery Journal Summer 2023

departments of their role within the organization. n Lead to a better understanding of actual impact of a loss of one or more processes. n Promote the elimination of gaps in IT recovery and business availability and recovery requirements. Reduced Costs Doing a BIA commonly leads to reductions in costs across the enterprise. Specifically, the BIA can accomplish the following: n Help eliminate or avoid fines related to regulatory requirements. n Lead to the removal of potential redundancies and unnecessary services or software. n Lead to reductions in costs relating to insurance, maintenance, and licensing. n Lead to reductions or elimination of costs because of a more accurate understanding of the company’s needs. Increased Compliance Conducting a BIA generally results in increased compliance with various types of requirements. Specifically, the BIA: n Often leads to the identification and subsequent closing of potential issues or gaps in regulatory compliance. Helping Management to See The best way to convince management that a BIA is necessary is to show them how performing one will benefit the com pany.

Your management team is dedicated to looking at the overall needs and risks of your organization. Make sure they have a clear under standing of the risks, costs, and benefits of conducting a BIA. There is a good chance that once they have a clear understanding of what the BIA can contribute to the organization in terms of improving functionality, reduc ing costs, and increasing compliance, they will approve your request to conduct one. Takeaways n Financial decisionmakers often lack understanding of the value of BIAs and resist giving approval for conducting them. n The BCM team might need to engage in a long-term process of educating management about the value of the BIA. n The heart of the BCM team’s case to management should be the ways the BIA will benefit the organization. n The benefits of the BIA fall into three categories: improving functionality, reducing costs, and increasing compliance. n When management has a clear understanding of the value of the BIA, they are more likely to agree to conduct one. v

Benefits of the BIA The heart of your case to management should be an explanation of the benefits in doing the BIA will bring to the organiza tion. To help in providing this explana tion, here is a list of the primary benefits of doing a BIA. The list is divided into three categories: improved functionality, reduced costs, and increased compliance. Improved Functionality Doing a BIA can lead to improved functionality at the enterprise across many areas. Specifically, the BIA can do the fol lowing: n Identify and document interdependencies between processes. n Identify and update the applications and systems used, as well as their importance. It can also lead to better understanding by IT of the functional importance of the various applications. n Identify shadow IT functions on which the business is critically dependent. There is a common assumption that backup and recovery are not needed for these SaaS/ cloud-based applications because the vendor will “handle” it. This assumption is often found to be false. n Lead to a better understanding of the nature and complexity of the IT and recovery processes. n Help you identify and understand new processes or changes to existing processes. n Lead to improvements in the interface between departments and groups. n Lead to increased understanding by

Richard Long is a senior advisory con sultant and practice team leader for MHA Consulting, where he has successfully leads international and domestic disaster recovery, technology assessment, crisis

management, and risk mitigation engagements.

22 DISASTER RECOVERY JOURNAL | SUMMER 2023