Publications

Docusign helps the California Natural Resources Agency and the Department of Water Resources accelerate its digital transformation

Made up of about 20,000+ employees, the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) is the parent agency to 26 distinct departments, conservancies and commissions. CNRA is dedicated to the restoration, protection and maintenance of the Golden State’s natural, historical and cultural resources. Within CNRA is the Department of Water Resources (DWR), which protects, conserves, develops and manages California’s resources and runs one of the nation’s largest state-built water delivery systems. “As in...

Aon scales and standardizes global HR with Docusign eSignature

Aon is a leading global professional services firm providing a broad range of risk, retirement and health solutions. The company’s 50,000 colleagues in 120 countries empower results for clients by using proprietary data and analytics to deliver insights that reduce volatility and improve performance. Aon is growing organically by 6% year over year. While the growth and global expansion via acquisition is great news for the business, it has presented opportunities for efficiency improvements with...

Oregon Health Authority Gains Contract Visibility and Speed with Docusign CLM

Created in 2009, the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) is charged with increasing access to affordable, high-quality healthcare to all Oregonians. The multitude of initiatives and programs coordinated by the Oregon Health Authority, including Behavioral Health Services, requires processing a constant stream of complex contracts—covering everything from provider agreements with individual clinicians to massive contracts with statewide coordinated care organizations. Approving and filing these agreeme...

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Embraces a Paradigm Shift with Docusign eSignature

Debuting in 1851 as a wooden prison ship anchored in San Francisco Bay, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is nearly as old as the state itself. Today, it employs over 63,000 people across 35 facilities. CDCR has gone through many changes over the years—most notably in 2004 when it added the “R” to its name, signaling a department-wide overhaul with a focus on rehabilitation. But, throughout its many evolutions, one thing had remained the same: a reliance on paper...

How Docusign CLM Helps Celonis Scale Its Global Business

Businesses of all sizes are dealing with ever-growing complexity in their infrastructure—with competing tools and fragmented systems creating major performance issues. Celonis is changing that with its AI-powered process mining technology. Founded by three friends in Munich, Germany, Celonis got its start as a college project designed to help businesses remove inefficiencies from key processes. Today, it’s one of the fastest-growing startups in Germany—and it’s expanded its footprint with additi...

GreenStone Farm Credit Services Transforms Agricultural Lending with Docusign CLM and nCino

Over a century ago, Congress passed the Federal Farm Loan Act—giving farmers better access to the capital they need to feed and fuel America. That milestone event led to the creation of one of the nation’s largest agricultural lending cooperatives, GreenStone Farm Credit Services.GreenStone’s goal is simple: to be rural America's first choice for financial services. With a diverse loan portfolio, $12 billion in managed assets and over 28,000 member-owners across Michigan and Wisconsin, it’s been...

Flowserve Boosts Speed and Profit Margins with Docusign CLM and Salesforce

How can a global corporation collaborate across departments to streamline contracting and boost profit margins? Flowserve took this challenge head-on just four years ago.The 200-year-old manufacturer offers the largest portfolio of fluid motion and control products in the world, with $4 billion in annual sales and a footprint in over 50 countries. “Contracts are valuable assets in the manufacturing world,” said Dundi Thompson, project manager in legal operations. But trying to manage them throug...

There’s a new voice in the hollow

In the fall of 2017, on their way to a shoot in West Virginia, the Parts Unknown crew made a pit stop in Lawrence County, Kentucky.
Tyler Childers, a flame-haired singer-songwriter and Lawrence County native, met the city slickers in town. “Unless you already had a clue of where you’re going, you’d really not have a clue at all where you were going,” he says.
Childers is the reason for the pit stop. Two songs from his debut studio album, Purgatory, feature prominently in the West Virginia episod...

Go where burritos are super

A San Francisco Mission-style super burrito is not for the weak-willed. If you’re not super drunk while you’re eating it (and, really, even if you are), you most likely will not want to move for a couple of hours afterward. But that is the beauty of this monstrosity: It was designed for working people to get the maximum number of carbs during lunch so they wouldn’t be hungry later.
Like almost everything that is currently popular in SF, the Mission-style burrito was invented in the 1960s, then p...

Reading by the City Lights

Just in the few years since I’ve moved away from San Francisco I’ve seen some of my favorite restaurants (R.I.P. Lafayette Coffee Shop) and stores shut down because of skyrocketing rents. Businesses—even some that have been open for over a century—have closed for this reason. As we all know, so much of the city’s grit and character is being scrubbed out by dudes wearing Google glasses.
Thankfully, in 2015 the city of San Francisco passed a bill that would help about 300 “legacy businesses” by su...

A baker’s dozen of memories, please

I have always dreamed of living close enough to a bakery that I could pop in for a fresh Danish or a loaf of bread for that night’s dinner, but I am from the less glamorous—and less tech-saturated—part of the Bay Area. The town I come from actually produces a lot of the fresh fruits and vegetables that you can buy around the Bay. (Ever heard of Brentwood corn?) The bakery I go to is actually 46 miles away from my house. But even though I have to drive that far, this place feels like my corner ba...

Need to know: The Bay Area

To me, there is no more important cultural group of the last 100 years than the Black Panthers. The original branch formed in Oakland in 1966 to combat police brutality, racism, and to help the black community defend itself against a system that did not benefit them. This history is told through the eyes of Elaine Brown, who was appointed the leader of the organization in 1974. It was the first time the male-dominated group had a woman leader; and through her hard work and guidance, the campaign...

Episode playlist: Lagos

The Lagos episode is filled with great music, from Afrobeat to Afrorock and psychedelic rock—you name it, they’ve got it. Here’s a playlist of all the greatest hits so you can dip your toes into Nigeria’s incredible music culture.
First up:
The Funkees were a Nigerian Afro-rock band that formed in the mid-1970s, after the Nigerian Civil War. This song infused a funk beat with a sick guitar solo that just makes you want to dance.
Grotto, another funk-based Afro rock group, was one of the most po...

I went to Prince’s like an idiot, but I swear the hot chicken was worth it.

Prince’s is a Nashville institution that has two locations—one in East Nashville (the OG) and one in South Nashville—and they even have a food truck now. They also frequent many community festivals around the greater Nashville area. But in case you thought I was giving you some inside intel, everyone knows about it. Hell, Sean Brock even went to it on his season of The Mind of a Chef. It’s Nashville’s worst-kept secret. That’s why the lines are insane.
Going off the recommendation, I thought we...

In defense of the hipsters

Jack White would probably get pissed if I called his record shop in Nashville a hipster haven. He would also hate it, as Bourdain does, when people call him a hipster idol. Alas, that is what they are, and that is what Third Man Records is. This is by no means an insult. I would actually go so far as to say that it is probably a compliment. White earned his reputation by making and producing his own music and loads of others’ music as well. Full disclosure: I love his music, and I am a relativel...

How women are keeping country music alive

Like most kids my age—I’m 23 but am still going to call myself a kid—I came upon country because someone older than me listened to it. My grandpa and I would ride around in his green Chevy and listen to Kat Country 103 when they still played the likes of Johnny Cash, George Strait, and Reba McEntire, but country never really stuck with me. Then when I moved to New York City in 2015, I started to listen to country as a subconscious way to rebel against my new cosmopolitan life and peers. It wasn’...

Episode playlist: the Bronx

The Bronx episode of “Parts Unknown” was jam-packed with hip hop royalty, from DJ Kool Herc to Afrika Bambaataa. These legends changed music forever and laid the bedrock for the sounds of today. There would be no Run-DMC, Beastie Boys, or Biggie Smalls without these pioneers. Don’t know about any of this? Here’s the playlist you need.

Not to be confused with DJ Kool, DJ Kool Herc is credited with creating hip hop in the early 1970s. He is the “grandfather of hip hop” and still resides in The Br...

Recipe: Schnitzel

While Bourdain was in Cologne, he ate one of Germany’s most famous foods. He described schnitzel as “surfboard-sized slabs of veal and pork filled with many wonderful things, dredged in breadcrumbs and fried in magical, magical deep fat.” Schnitzel is served throughout Germany and Austria. It is often said to be a Viennese dish, but in truth schnitzel did not originate in either country. Its storied past dates all the way back to the Byzantine Empire. I must say, though, that the Germans and Aus...

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