Outputs from the BIA are used to develop the disaster recovery strategy. This information will help the business to develop their business continuity plans and will assist the IT teams in developing their disaster recovery policy:

• Recovery point objective: The recovery point objective is the time that the IT team must be able to restore data from the past after an event has occurred. This is best understood as the time between the most recent backup and a disruption.
• Recovery time objective: The recovery time objective is the time that the IT team has to restore past data after an event has occurred.
• Enterprise prioritization: The IT team may have multiple applications living at the various prioritization tiers. This is where the IT and business teams discuss where an individual application will fall within the restoration priority.
• Service level agreements: Service level agreements are established so that clear expectations are developed between the business and IT teams.

The BIA is a very useful document that serves to provide a clear set of requirements from the business and deliverables from the IT team. By going through the BIA process, both parties have a clear understanding of the business criticality associated with the data and how quickly information can be restored in the event of a failure.