Business Impact Analysis
Rank your critical processes by cost per day of outage, set recovery time objectives, and find the gaps.
Example scenario—not a forecast or verified benchmark. Enable JavaScript to edit inputs, view charts, save locally and export your analysis.
Example inputs
- Critical processes
- [{"name":"Order intake & scheduling","dailyCost":6000,"mtd":1,"recoveryDays":3,"workaround":"partial"},{"name":"Service delivery / production","dailyCost":15000,"mtd":2,"recoveryDays":3,"workaround":"none"},{"name":"Billing & collections","dailyCost":2000,"mtd":7,"recoveryDays":4,"workaround":"partial"},{"name":"Payroll","dailyCost":1500,"mtd":3,"recoveryDays":5,"workaround":"none"},{"name":"Customer support phones & email","dailyCost":2500,"mtd":1,"recoveryDays":1,"workaround":"partial"}]
- Disruption scenario length
- 5
- Chance of a disruption like this in a year
- 10
Example results
A 5-day disruption would cost about $70K; 3 of 5 processes recover slower than they can tolerate, putting $25K beyond the danger line.
- Loss from a 5-day disruption
- $69,600
- Loss beyond tolerance (recovery gap)
- $25,200
- Cost per day, all processes down
- $22,800
- Expected annual loss
- $6,960
- Processes with a recovery gap
- 3
- Tier 1 processes (<= 1 day tolerance)
- 2
What stands out
Service delivery / production: recovery 3d vs 2d tolerance
A 1-day gap past the point of serious damage, worth about $15,000 in a 5-day event.
Order intake & scheduling: recovery 3d vs 1d tolerance
A 2-day gap past the point of serious damage, worth about $7,200 in a 5-day event.
1 short-tolerance process has no workaround
Service delivery / production stop completely and cannot wait more than 2 days.
Service delivery / production drives 65% of scenario loss
$45,000 of the $69,600 total. Recovery investment here has the highest payback.
Next actions
- Cut Service delivery / production recovery from 3 to 1.5 days (RTO): document the restore steps, pre-arrange backup systems or vendors, and test it.
- Cut Order intake & scheduling recovery from 3 to 0.75 days (RTO): document the restore steps, pre-arrange backup systems or vendors, and test it.
- Write a manual workaround (paper forms, alternate vendor, call forwarding) for Service delivery / production and drill it once a year.
- Use the $6,960 expected annual loss as the ceiling for yearly continuity spend, and confirm business-interruption insurance covers $70K.
Model assumptions & limitations
- Target RTO is set at 75% of maximum tolerable downtime to leave a safety buffer.
- Rule of thumb: a partial manual workaround avoids about 40% of the daily loss; a full alternate site or vendor about 80%.
- Daily cost is held flat; real losses often accelerate after the first few days as customers defect.
- Annual probability (10%) is your estimate, not an actuarial figure.