Ritu Agarwal to E-Chat with Global Audience Nov. 14

Ritu Agarwal, founder and director of the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems and professor and the Dean’s Chair of Information Systems, will discuss her recent study, “The Benefits of Combining Data with Empathy,” in an e-chat hosted by All Analytics, an online community for information management, business intelligence and analytics.

Follow the conversation, starting 3 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 14.

Agarwal and co-author Peter Weill, MIT, will answer questions about their findings into the benefits of combining data with empathy to optimize business results. They propose a “softscaling” approach that’s designed to help companies more effectively meet an intensifying demand for various products and services, from health care and telecommunications to automobiles and home mortgages. Softscaling involves:

• Optimizing business processes and technology
• Fostering emotional connections with consumers
• Using data emphathetically

Agarwal and Weill described their conclusions in a recent article.

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