Eques­tri­an Dres­sage com­pe­ti­tions faced var­i­ous chal­lenges, includ­ing labo­ri­ous and effort­ful scor­ing and sub­par sports pre­sen­ta­tion and fan expe­ri­ences. In addi­tion, this very tra­di­tion­al Olympic sport had a strong aver­sion towards chang­ing and improv­ing process­es, espe­cial­ly if they involve technology.

Black Horse One (BHO) set out to make shows run more effi­cient­ly, with less per­son­nel, sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduc­ing paper waste and improv­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion of the sport. Begin­ning with a fan-engage­ment app (which reached down­loads of over 100k play­ers), and mov­ing to a paper­less scor­ing sys­tem used by the major­i­ty of inter­na­tion­al shows (includ­ing the Olympics in Tokyo), BHO has mod­ern­ized the sport beyond recog­ni­tion. Where once there exist­ed mul­ti­ple judges writ­ing scores to be checked, there now exists an online scor­ing eco-sys­tem on par with the best sport­ing events in the world. 

Build­ing the first paper­less solu­tion in dres­sage led to adop­tion by the glob­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies, which has pre­sent­ed a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty for SAP to show­case the pow­er of Ana­lyt­ics Cloud and HANA — both for scale and reli­a­bil­i­ty. It has also pro­vid­ed a pow­er­ful plat­form for BHO to expand its oper­a­tions beyond dres­sage and across the oth­er eques­tri­an sports. 

An addi­tion­al ben­e­fit has been the way in which BHO has been able to sup­port the sus­tain­abil­i­ty dri­ve for many major events. Eques­tri­an shows which use BHO have seen a 92% decrease in use of paper at their events.