If you’re running a business in Jamaica, you don’t need a reminder of what disruption looks like — Hurricane Melissa made that painfully clear. Power lines down, data centers offline, operations paralyzed. For many companies, recovery wasn’t about technology — it was about priorities.
The storm exposed a hard truth: a lot of organizations had “business continuity plans,” but few had an updated, actionable Business Impact Analysis (BIA) driving them. Most already knew what a BIA was — they’d done the workshops, filled out the templates — but they hadn’t revisited it in years.
And when Melissa hit, that neglect showed. Teams tried to bring everything back online at once. Resources were spread thin. The systems that truly kept the business running were stuck waiting in the queue.
Here’s the reality: not everything in your organization is mission critical. When disruption strikes, knowing exactly what keeps your business alive — and how long you can afford for it to be down — determines how fast you recover.
That’s what a proper, up-to-date BIA delivers. It’s not about documentation; it’s about focus. A strong BIA helps you identify your most critical functions, understand the real business impact if they fail, and define achievable Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs).
Bringing insights together from across your departments creates a clear picture of priorities and dependencies:
- Finance quantifies revenue loss and compliance risks.
- Operations highlights workflow bottlenecks.
- IT identifies system dependencies and recovery timelines.
When these perspectives align, you stop guessing — and start making data-driven decisions about where to invest in protection and recovery.
The goal is simple: protect what matters most. A well-executed BIA turns uncertainty into clarity, ensuring that your recovery strategies align with business realities — not just technical assumptions.
So, if your BIA hasn’t been updated since before Melissa, it’s time to fix that. Business conditions, technologies, and dependencies have changed — and your continuity plan needs to reflect that new reality.
Book a consultation with Info Exchange to revisit your Business Impact Analysis. We’ll guide your team through identifying what truly drives your business, setting realistic RTOs and RPOs, and building a recovery plan that holds up when the next storm hits.
Because the question isn’t if the next hurricane comes — it’s whether your business is ready to keep going when it does.
