The purpose of a risk management plan and business impact analysis is to identify and quantify the risks in your business. This is essential for any organization because it enables you to make informed decisions about how to manage your risks. You can use your risk management plan and business impact analysis as a tool to help you get started on various projects and tasks.
The steps below will help you develop a complete risk management plan and business impact analysis that addresses all of your risk needs.
1. Know your business objectives
Business objectives are the goals you want to accomplish by undertaking a change or by performing a project. They include revenue, cost savings and other measures of success. For example, if you want to increase sales by 20 percent and reduce costs by 5 percent, your business objectives would be to increase sales by 20 percent and decrease costs by 5 percent.
Your business objectives should be based on your core competencies and capabilities in addition to external factors such as market trends and competition. Your objectives should also be achievable within a reasonable time frame.
2. Identify potential risks
Identify potential risks and their likelihood of occurring. This can be done by looking at historical data, for example, what happened in previous cases of a similar nature. Look for trends and common themes in these events; this helps identify where there may be issues with the organisation’s processes or procedures that could lead to future problems.
3. Define the Problem
The first step in preparing a risk management plan and business impact analysis is to define the problem. This can be accomplished by creating a list of all risks that you believe exist within your organization and then ranking them by severity. For example, if your organization has a high-risk problem with its reputation, then you would rank this as the highest-risk problem.
4. Assess Risk Magnitude
Next, assess the magnitude of each risk on your list. A risk with a low probability of occurrence (and high impact) should be ranked higher than one with a high probability of occurrence (and low impact). If you have multiple risks that are equally important, then it is best to rank them based on their relative significance within your organization rather than by their absolute magnitude alone. In fact, if someone were to ask you how much money would be required to solve one problem but not another (for example), you may choose to solve the latter instead because it has greater consequences for your organization if it fails than does solving the former (which will not affect your organization in any way).
5. Assess the probability and impact
Assess the probability and impact of each risk in order to determine whether it represents a credible threat or is simply hypothetical or remote.
6. Determine mitigation strategies
Determine how you will mitigate each identified risk by taking into account possible countermeasures (e.g., internal controls). Consider both internal and external factors in developing a mitigation strategy that addresses each identified risk while maintaining overall corporate goals and objectives (e.g., maintain Integrity of information systems).
7. Specify actions required to reduce risk exposure
The next step is to specify the actions required to reduce the risk exposure. It means coming up with a mitigation plan. This is a very important step because it provides an opportunity for you to see what actions are needed and how much money will be involved in achieving these goals. You can use this information to determine the budget and timeline for implementing the initiatives.
In addition, it will help you to better understand your environment and how it affects your business decisions. With such a mitigation plan, you can identify any gaps or weaknesses that may exist in your risk management strategy which could lead to problems down the road. The actions will likely require Financial Investment for better results.
8. Continue to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of your business processes
Every year, you should look at your processes and make sure they are still effective. You may find that some of them need to be tweaked or even changed completely. This is especially true if you’re a small business with limited resources.
In addition, if you’re having problems with your business, it’s important to find out why the problems are happening and what you can do about them to ensure business continuity.
