Nestled between rugged mountains and expansive ranchlands, San Miguel County, Colorado, has balanced natural beauty with an industrious spirit for more than 140 years. Once a booming gold and silver mining hub, it\u2019s now best known for the Telluride Ski Resort.<\/p>\n
The county’s communities are as diverse as its landscape, so the county government can’t take a one-size-fits-all approach. With only 130 employees, the administration provides services ranging from road and bridge maintenance to public health and property assessments. It\u2019s a big challenge to address the needs of communities of various sizes, and like many municipalities, San Miguel County has to stretch its limited resources further each year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe county government is doing more with fewer people,\u201d said Deputy Clerk to the San Miguel County Board Carmen Warfield. \u201cIt\u2019s a battle to meet people\u2019s needs while keeping our sanity.\u201d<\/p>\n
To meet growing demands, San Miguel turned to the Docusign Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) platform to digitize workflows, accelerate agreement finalization, and improve constituent services\u2014making processes faster, simpler, and more efficient.<\/p>\n
Tackling a mountain of paperwork<\/strong><\/p>\n Before adopting Docusign IAM, San Miguel County\u2019s document management process was cumbersome, manual, and time-intensive. Staff printed contracts, wrote cover letters, and mailed physical documents with self-addressed return envelopes. As a result, signed documents for critical funding applications could take weeks\u2014or even months\u2014to return. Some never made it back at all.<\/p>\n Agreements were stored in physical folders and filing cabinets, organized by year. While some were scanned and saved to individual computers, the process was inconsistent, and files weren\u2019t searchable. The county\u2019s IT department had set up a dedicated document server and attempted to implement an agenda management system for board meeting notes and minutes. But the server fell into disuse, and the agenda tool lacked the archival capabilities needed to build a complete, centralized digital repository.<\/p>\n Finding a single document could take 45\u201360 minutes, with no definitive source of truth. Employees manually tracked agreement expirations in personal calendars, and residents felt the impact\u2014there was no way to guarantee responses to constituent requests within the mandated three-day window.<\/p>\n The county tested several agenda management systems, but none were robust enough. They needed a comprehensive platform to permanently store and easily access all documents. Deputy Clerk Carmen Warfield even considered scanning the archive herself, but the task would require two or three full-time employees. Beyond being impractical, it was tedious, repetitive work that took time away from higher-impact projects serving constituents.<\/p>\n Then they discovered Docusign IAM\u2014and everything changed.<\/p>\n \u201cI save so much time… All our files are on one platform, and I\u2019m no longer the keeper of it all. Anybody can go in and find a document as easily as I can.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Carmen Warfield A phased transition to Docusign<\/strong><\/p>\n Moving away from paper-based processes didn\u2019t happen overnight. San Miguel County started slowly, first deploying Docusign in the attorney\u2019s office, which handled the highest volume of contracts. The team has since onboarded 10 active departments, with HR next in line to digitize welcome packages\u2014eliminating hundreds of printed pages and moving the county one step closer to its environmental goals.<\/p>\n With Docusign IAM and Navigator, the county has automated agreement workflows, centralized documents into a single searchable repository, and cut document retrieval time to just two or three seconds. Files are no longer siloed, and automated reminders ensure contracts never miss a renewal date.<\/p>\n Docusign also helps county employees build trust with residents. Staff can respond to information requests quickly and thoroughly, meeting the county\u2019s three-day response window and increasing transparency into the activities of elected officials, such as the Board of County Commissioners.<\/p>\n The team has uploaded agreements dating back to 2015, creating a single source of truth that increases visibility, expands access across departments, and builds public trust by helping staff meet a three-day response window for information requests. Warfield is championing a new policy requiring every new county contract to be processed through Docusign\u2014further streamlining the signature process, ensuring consistent records management, and laying a strategic foundation for more transparent, efficient operations in the years ahead.<\/p>\n Already, Docusign IAM is delivering measurable benefits\u2014faster processes, streamlined collaboration, and eco-friendly workflows\u2014with even greater impact still ahead.<\/p>\n “If I didn\u2019t have this capability, I don\u2019t think I could keep up with my work. I also think that burnout would\u2019ve been a real issue because there were so many manual pieces to it,\u201d Warfield said. \u201cI don\u2019t mind working hard, but I want to work smart.”<\/strong><\/p>\n Carmen Warfield Nestled between rugged mountains and expansive ranchlands, San Miguel County, Colorado, has balanced natural beauty with an industrious spirit for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":11228,"template":"","format":"standard","customers_category":[256],"class_list":["post-11225","customers","type-customers","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","customers_category-docusign"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/32102.jpg",435,295,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/32102.jpg",435,295,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/32102.jpg",435,295,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/32102-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/32102-300x203.jpg",300,203,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/32102.jpg",435,295,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/32102.jpg",435,295,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/32102.jpg",435,295,false],"woodmart_shop_catalog_x2":["https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/32102.jpg",435,295,false],"woocommerce_thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/32102-300x295.jpg",300,295,true],"woocommerce_single":["https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/32102.jpg",435,295,false],"woocommerce_gallery_thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/32102-150x102.jpg",150,102,true],"rt_custom":["https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/32102.jpg",435,295,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"dkm-admin","author_link":"https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/author\/dkm-admin\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":" Docusign<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Nestled between rugged mountains and expansive ranchlands, San Miguel County, Colorado, has balanced natural beauty with an industrious spirit for","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/customers\/11225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/customers"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/customers"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/customers\/11225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11238,"href":"https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/customers\/11225\/revisions\/11238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"customers_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dkmeco.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/customers_category?post=11225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nDeputy Clerk to the San Miguel County Board, San Miguel County<\/p>\n
\nDeputy Clerk to the San Miguel County Board, San Miguel County<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"