How the San Antonio Housing Authority Uses DocuSign to Drive Community Impact

The City of San Antonio is one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S. Over 1.5 million residents currently call the city home, and that number is expected to nearly double by 2040. To mitigate affordability challenges caused by this population boom, the city offers housing assistance to low-income residents via the San Antonio Housing Authority (SAHA). Since 1937, SAHA has aimed to strengthen the city’s communities and its growing population through quality, affordable housing. 

SAHA, which serves a population of 65,000 residents across thousands of properties, had long relied on a number of disparate systems and paper processes for signing and tracking agreements—and it was long overdue for an upgrade. SAHA needed a technology that would integrate with its existing infrastructure and streamline its agreement processes.

With simple integrations, DocuSign Agreement Cloud modernizes procurement for SAHA

When Director of IT Jo Ana Alvarado and the IT team began their search for a system of agreement, SAHA was already in the midst of a strategic digital transformation, which involved the introduction of the Google G-Suite. The DocuSign Agreement Cloud (DAC) was the logical choice for Alvarado, since it integrated seamlessly with the suite of Google products that it began using for email, document creation, file sharing and collaboration. 

“We needed our agreement workflow to begin and end with Google,” said Alvarado. “It is an integral piece of our strategy that we weren’t willing to compromise.”

Early on, Alvarado implemented the DocuSign Agreement Cloud to streamline procurement, which is a critical vehicle for SAHA to document and track business partnerships and ongoing opportunities. The paper-based process would often cause delays if, for example, someone was away from their desk and couldn’t sign the document in a timely manner—ultimately delaying affordable housing programs and projects. 

“The procurement process is heavy on approvals, and routing would take days to process with literally hundreds of pages per document,” Alvarado said. “Our procurement coordinator would use a rolling cart to roll all that paper up and down the halls every day for signatures.” 

With DocuSign Agreement Cloud, SAHA has digitized its document approval process. Employees can now sign off on any device in any location, which eliminates signature delays and gives administrative staff real-time visibility into the status of each document. Since implementing the DocuSign Agreement Cloud, SAHA’s time to complete procurement requests is down from three weeks to only two days, giving employees more time to focus on strategic work. 

Transforming business and community operations with DocuSign Agreement Cloud

Organizational efficiency doesn’t just impact SAHA—it also helps the people who depend on its services. With fewer manual processes, SAHA employees have more time to focus on serving the community by helping individuals find housing. 

While the DocuSign Agreement Cloud helped SAHA streamline its agreement process internally, the work isn't done. SAHA is planning to extend their usage of the solution to external processes, like rental agreements.