As an organization, Skate Canada had an antiquated accounting system that was paper-intensive, lacked a reporting structure for details on transactions and wasn't supported by the proper IT infrastructure. The system was so inefficient that Skate Canada accounting employees had to write and sign thousands of paper cheques a month by hand. To make matters worse, this legacy system was end-of-life, out of warranty and constantly breaking down.
Skate Canada also had decades worth of historical materials that it was paying $36,000 a year to store in a warehouse in Edmonton, which was more than 2,400 kilometers away. When requests came in for a clip to be used on TV or in advertising, the distance made it difficult to access information and sometimes, Skate Canada missed the deadline. That is, if the footage was even intact. The information was stored on a multitude of media types — VHS, BETA, hard drives, audio cassettes, etc. — and some of it was deteriorating.
At the six or more annual championship events, Skate Canada needed anywhere from 5 to 15 printers to print schedules and programs for attendees and scoring materials for judges and coaches. However, short-term printer rental came at a premium price, and the devices shipped were typically clearance or used models — not the technology needed to make printing more efficient. Plus, the volunteers who printed materials for the events output far more than was typically distributed, leading to excessive paper waste.