A Business Impact Assessment (BIA) of all business units that are part of the business environment enables the project team to: identify critical systems, processes and functions; assess the economic impact of incidents and disasters that result in a denial of access to systems services and other services and facilities; and assess the "pain threshold," that is, the length of time business units can survive without access to systems, services and facilities.

The BIA Report is presented to the "Steering Committee" which often just means the business owner. This report identifies critical service functions and the timeframes in which they must be recovered after interruption. The BIA Report should then be used as a basis for identifying systems and resources required to support the critical services provided by information processing and other services and facilities.