Accelerating the Growth of a Premier Skating Club
Amanda Pess
Office Manager
Olympic Coach
& Skating Director
Overview
Home to World Champion and Olympic Gold Medalist, Kaetlyn Osmond, the Ice Palace Figure Skating Club is one of the most sought-after skating clubs in Canada. Under the guidance of Olympic Coach Ravi Walia and his staff, the Ice Palace has attracted a large membership of more than 1,800 skaters. Back in 2015, however, the club was bogged down with out-of-date software tools, timely club management processes, and stacks of binders full of paper. The demand for their expert training and coaching was growing and they needed a solution that could scale. In Uplifter, the Ice Palace recognized a likeminded partner who could deliver the championship level skating club software they needed.
Using Uplifter for online registration
About the Ice Palace Figure Skating Club
The Ice Palace Figure Skating Club is focused on providing their skaters with opportunities for fun, fitness and achievement. With over 1,800 members, their Skate Canada certified coaching staff creates a positive environment where skaters of all ages and abilities can develop important life-skills, such as discipline and teamwork. The Ice Palace has been in operation since 1983 and employs a coaching staff of 23 along with 3 staff members, an Executive Committee, and countless volunteers. Led by Olympic Coach, Ravi Walia, the Ice Palace has become a leader in producing national figure skating talents, namely 2018 World Champion and Olympic Gold Medalist, Kaetlyn Osmond, along with 2019 National Medalists Aurora Cotop and Matthew Newnham.
The Situation
The Ice Palace Figure Skating Club holds four club registration periods per year, with upwards of 1,000 skaters each registration. Before Uplifter, these registrations generated an excessive amount of paperwork.
Each year the administrator found herself filling 10 binders to the brim with print-offs and handwritten forms. At the end of each season this mountain of paperwork would then be shredded, filling numerous garbage bags to eliminate old skater information – a time-consuming task all on its own.
As a result of the registration workload, it was difficult for the staff to keep up with important tasks during registration periods. Office staff, coaches, and members who needed to access important athlete information would have to come into the office or make a call to a busy administrator and hope they could field their request.
The Ice Palace knew this system needed to be fixed. They needed registration automation so they could easily and securely access their athlete database from anywhere. This is when Ice Palace Skating Director and Olympic Coach, Ravi Walia, heard from several Ontario skating clubs that Uplifter’s software was making a positive impact on their club operations. Ravi took a closer look at Uplifter’s club management software and then suggested to the club’s board members that they begin using it.
The Solution
Now that the Ice Palace Figure Skating Club is using Uplifter’s web-based software, their entire club data is centralized, accessible and secure online. Today, that stack of 10 binders has been replaced by one. And the end-of-the-season paper shred is no longer needed. Most importantly, the Ice Palace is benefiting from less time wasted on repetitive, manual tasks, especially during registration periods.
Amanda estimates that “Uplifter has cut down on administration time and costs by at least 75% for registrations.” Among the reasons for time savings, she explains that they’ve been able to “drastically reduce the time it takes to setup registrations by using Uplifter’s program cloning features.”
Program cloning can be accomplished with the simple click of a button. By taking advantage of Uplifter’s automation and time saving features like this, the Ice Palace team has been able shift their focus to growing their membership. Amanda says that “Uplifter has definitely allowed us to reach a larger market,” thanks to the online registration capabilities. And with all of Uplifter’s automation, including real-time waitlists, payment reminders, and more; Amanda is able to trust Uplifter’s software to process new and returning members so she can focus efforts on more important tasks. She explains that,
“with Uplifter, once I have registrations set up, I know that I can focus my time on other aspects of my work to encourage people to register and Uplifter will take care of the rest.”
By leveraging Uplifter’s online registration and club automation features, the Ice Palace Figure Skating Club has been able to maximize their capabilities and revenue-generating activities.
“Since starting with Uplifter, our membership has grown by more than 35%. Although some of this growth can be attributed to staffing and other variables, there is no doubt that Uplifter has played a large role in that success.”
We believe the results speak for themselves: Uplifter and the Ice Palace Figure Skating Club make a great pair.
Favourite Features
Intuitive Athlete Profiles:
Intuitive and detailed athlete information is now available to The Ice Palace Coordinator and Skating Director at all times. If the Ice Palace Coordinator or Skating Director need to look-up a skater’s level, programs, and past registrations, it only takes a moment to reference Uplifter and answer their query. This convenience eliminates unnecessary back-and-forth and the need to task office staff with these extra questions.
Best of all, an athlete’s skating progress is automatically added to these same athlete profiles once a club begins tracking athlete performance in Uplifter.
Communication Tools:
Delivering clear, timely and targeted club communications to your members is vital. The Ice Palace makes it a point to use Uplifter’s email tools to keep in close contact with their members. Amanda explains that, “Uplifter allows us to send reminders to members so they can stay on top of the latest news, updates and registration information.” Keeping customers in-the-know is a great way to increase customer satisfaction for clubs.
Program & Revenue Reporting:
Uplifter offers more than 30 unique reports right out of the box. We also allow clubs to create custom reports and save them so they can be run again at a later date. “Being able to track our revenues and programs has been huge for our club and team,” Amanda explains. Uplifter understands that having in-depth data allows you to complete in-depth analysis on all your programs. This sort of detailed view ensures your programs are best serving the needs of your membership.
