Current Research

What I'm exploring now.

An evolving list of research areas Donna is actively exploring, writing about, and testing with executive teams. This page grows continuously.

Operational Intelligence™

Instrumenting operations, workforce, CX, and AI as a single enterprise operating layer — governed against measurable outcomes.

AI Readiness

The organizational preconditions for AI to compound value: governance, ownership, workflow maturity, and operational data quality.

Enterprise AI

How enterprises move past pilot theater — sequencing AI investments against operational readiness rather than model hype.

Healthcare Operations

Prior authorization, utilization management, and administrative workflow as the highest-ROI surface for healthcare AI.

Workflow Intelligence™

A structured layer that instruments healthcare and enterprise workflows so automation compounds instead of creating new operational debt.

Customer Experience

CX as an operational discipline — engineered around resolution, effort, trust, and retention, not brand statements.

Future of Contact Centers

The rewire beneath CCaaS/WEM consolidation and how AI-native operating models change forecasting, staffing, and quality.

Competitive Intelligence

CI as a revenue function — how continuous signal from sales, customers, and analysts becomes structured input to product, GTM, and positioning.

Healthcare Automation

Where administrative AI actually earns ROI across payer, provider, and patient — and where it creates Accelerated Dysfunction™.

Outcome Ownership

Engineering enterprise accountability around outcomes customers care about — and governing them the way finance governs spend.

Enterprise AI beyond pilots

What separates the enterprises that scale AI from those that stall at proof-of-concept — and why the answer is operating model, not model selection.

Healthcare workflow automation

Prior authorization as the cleanest case study in fragmented ownership, and where administrative AI actually earns ROI across payer, provider, and patient.

Operational Intelligence™ as an operating layer

Treating operational intelligence as a durable enterprise layer — not a dashboard project — that connects workforce, CX, and AI to business outcomes.

AI governance beyond technology

Governance that reviews accountability, not just tooling — closing the Ownership Gap before AI scales whatever is broken underneath it.

Outcome ownership at the enterprise level

Engineering ownership around outcomes customers actually care about — resolution, effort, trust, retention — and governing them the way finance governs spend.

Private equity and CX

What the Thoma Bravo / Verint / Calabrio consolidation signals for AI, WEM, WFM, and the future operating model of contact centers.

Future of product marketing

Operator-grounded PMM as the antidote to slideware — how competitive intelligence and voice-of-operator reshape category positioning.

Contact center evolution

From volume × AHT to outcome-based workforce planning — and what happens when resolution rate becomes a first-class planning input.

Workflow Intelligence™ in healthcare

Instrumenting healthcare workflows so administrative automation compounds instead of creating new operational debt.