Kickstarter success story to help teachers around the world tackle STEAM skills gap with innovative play-based learning kits

SAM Labs, an award winning EdTech company, has chosen Oracle NetSuite to support its rapid growth as it helps address the increasing global demand for science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics (STEAM) skills.

With NetSuite, SAM Labs is able to focus on its goals of getting young students excited about technology while easing the mounting pressure on time-strapped teachers by streamlining and scaling its critical business processes.

In the UK alone, a shortfall in STEAM-educated graduates is making it difficult for employers to fill in-demand positions, which is costing the country an estimated £63 billion per year in lost GDP1. Moreover, exhausted teachers are struggling to adapt their lesson plans quickly enough, with 93 percent saying their workload is too heavy2. To help address this challenge, SAM Labs conducted a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2014 to fund new IoT-connected learning kits that allow teachers to present STEAM lessons in a highly interactive and engaging environment. To keep up with the demand for its innovative play-based learning kits and scale its business internationally, SAM Labs selected NetSuite.

“The STEAM skills gap isn’t a localised issue, it’s a global problem,” said Joachim Horn, Founder of SAM Labs. “Teachers need more time and resources to adapt their STEAM lesson plans and with our play-based learning kits, we empower teachers to help students aged between seven and eleven years to learn the fundamentals of coding and computer-based problem solving in a fun and engaging way. This approach has proved very successful and to keep up with the growing demand, we selected NetSuite.”

NetSuite has enabled SAM Labs to unify its teams, improve the flow of information between departments and accommodate growing demand for its products from across global markets. As a result, SAM Labs is able to scale its business by eliminating the complexity of its previous business processes and systems and bring its revolutionary teaching resources to more schools, teachers, and most importantly, young students. SAM Labs is now being used in classrooms in more than 20 countries including the United Kingdom, United States, China, Australia and Brazil.

“It’s a privilege to work with a company that’s making such huge strides in the education sector, not just in the UK but around the world,” said Nicky Tozer, VP, EMEA at Oracle NetSuite. “SAM Labs has come a long way since raising its first $160,000 on Kickstarter, and with our platform, the SAM Labs team have set themselves up to make an even bigger dent in the global STEAM skills gap.”