In 2006 the Canadian Chito Ryu Association had about 50 dojo and almost 3000 members across the country. The administrative demands on the volunteer directors responsible for the association paperwork had reached a critical point.

The majority of dojo are volunteer operations. Their abilities to accurately complete the minimal paperwork in a timely manner varied widely. Compounding this was the poorly communicated organizational policies and lack of administrative resouces in the CCRA. Volunteers could only do so much, year in and year out.

Much of the paperwork was delegated to the provincial associations, but there was still too much variation in the accuracy and timing of even the most basic steps i.e. annual registrations.

Shifting from a disfunctional paper system to a web based information system addresses these bottlenecks. The first version was written and tested at that time, with the intention to scale it up for use by all CCRA dojo.

Currently, there are under twenty ICKF Chito Ryu dojo in Canada, but the time saving principles are exactly the same. Enter information once and let the system use it to get everything done.

The online system centers around the individual dojo being responsible for maintaining their dojo records on the system. The information requested would be the minimum necessary to complete the annual registrations.

The work load of entering and maintaining data records on potentially thousands of individuals is spread among the respective dojo administrators. The majority of dojo have under 100 members, so once created, the separate dojo databases would not take much to maintain.

In return for keeping their dojo membership information online, the dojo admins are able to eliminate 90% of their repetitive annual registration paperwork.

See: Paperless Work Flow

The central web page is ryusan.com/ccra/. There you can click down to your dojo. You will need to request the password to access your dojo web page from the system admin info@ryusan.com.

The first step is to complete your dojo's contact information records.

The dojo data required includes:

• Dojo Name
• Mailing Address
• City
• Postal Code
• Contact Name
• Phone#
• Email
• Web Page
• Sensei
• Dojo Address
• Dojo City

The next step is to create the dojo member records. If you already have these in a stand-alone spreadsheet or database, they may be able to be exported and plugged into the online database.

The member data required is:

• Surname
• First Name
• Date of Birth
• Status
• Current Rank
• Date of Rank

The database is set up to collect more types of information, but the above is the minimum requirement.

Once the initial dojo records are entered, required maintenance of the information is minimal. At the beginning of each calendar year:

• Review the Dojo Contact Information and make any required changes.
• Add new member records to the database
• Update all member records with current rank and date of rank.

Once this is done, all the submissions for various annual registrations can be completed.

See: Paperless Work Flow

Using the Dojo information in the database, a minimal dojo information web page is automatically created for any dojo that does not have its own web site.

The Display Additional Information link on the Dojo Desktop page takes you to a simple input form where you can enter dojo information.

Contact information from the database is combined with the information entered and a simple “business card” style web page is created which is displayed when someone looks up your dojo through the ICKF Canada web site. Example Dojo Page

• Enter Dojo Information
• Enter Member Records

In January or February each year the following registrations are scheduled:

• ICKF Canada Dojo Registration
• ICKF Canada Member Registration
• ICKF Sohonbu Member Registration
• Provincial NKA Registration Forms
• Child Fitness Tax Receipts

With the basic membership records in the dojo database, there are a wide range of functions that individual dojo will be able to make use of, by adding extension modules, such as:

• Dojo Fees Tracking
• Daily Attendance
• Kyu Grading Tracking
• Ad Hoc Membership Reports
• Email Newsletters