Donovan Watts

Director of Innovation and Process Improvement · May 2019 — Mar 2024

• Owned the organization-wide business application portfolio outside Accounting's stack and managed an estimated $150K–$200K in annual SaaS spend for a 150-to-250-person remote-first organization.
• Led Salesforce administration for hundreds of users; later managed two Salesforce administrators who reported directly to him, with responsibility for data quality, dashboards, training, and optimization.
• Led process improvement across HR, IT, Accounting, Research Operations, Research, and Sales, translating business needs into standardized workflows for onboarding, client compliance, digital signatures, project kickoffs, and team communication.
• Introduced and supported core collaboration and operations platforms, and designed the Zoom Sessions Generator across Airtable, Google Sheets, Slack, Zapier, and Zoom to improve consistency and reduce repeated setup work.

UX Research Manager

• Managed researchers and contractors and guided quality, scope, profitability, and delivery across engagements.
• Managed three direct reports by FY2014 and built role scorecards, feedback, delegation, and FinancialForce review tools.

Earlier roles included Senior UX Researcher, UX Researcher, Associate UX Researcher, and Administrative Assistant / Admin Coordinator.

AI-enabled process improvement and automation

• Build and operate Ground Control, combining AI-assisted interpretation, deterministic workflow rules, and accounting-system integrations for financial operations.
• Designed Outlook-to-QuickBooks Online remittance processing with confidence-based autoposting; added journal-entry generation from recurring Paylocity payroll and Shopify sales reports.
• Automated a law-firm commission-split workflow from multiple report uploads to one action, replacing an approximately three-hour monthly spreadsheet chore.

Wired practical solutions using Zapier, Excel, and HubSpot to reduce repetitive operational work.

Built and improved workflows spanning Salesforce, Airtable, Google Sheets, Slack, Zapier, Zoom, Box Sign, and internal operating routines.