Quick and easy digitalisation

Shoestring’s simple, inexpensive approach helps companies satisfy real business needs.

Why Shoestring?

Investing in digital technologies is challenging – it can be difficult to:

Work out what you need
Find suitable options that fit in your business
Justify the benefits and return on investment

Using Shoestring’s simple, hands-on approach, companies can quickly investigate the potential for digital solutions and build evidence for a business case in a low-cost, low-risk way while realising small but tangible improvements in priority areas such as quality, productivity and/or sustainability from day one.

Why Shoestring?

Investing in digital technologies is challenging – it can be difficult to:

Work out what you need,
Find suitable options that fit in your business
Justify the benefits and return on investment

Using Shoestring’s simple, hands-on approach, companies can quickly investigate the potential for digital solutions and build evidence for a business case in a low-cost, low-risk way while realising small but tangible improvements in priority areas such as quality, productivity and/or sustainability from day one.

What is Shoestring?

Shoestring is building a global community focussed on practical digitalisation for small and medium sized businesses.

At Shoestring, we believe that the best way to learn is by doing, so we use low-cost, off-the-shelf technologies to build digital solutions that solve common problems.

We offer starter solutions which are small-scale solutions that provide immediate benefits without disrupting core operations, help build digital confidence and skills, and prepare employees to embrace further digital technologies.

What is Shoestring?

Shoestring is building a global community focussed on practical digitalisation for small and medium sized businesses.

At Shoestring, we believe that the best way to learn is by doing, so we use low-cost, off-the-shelf technologies to build digital solutions that solve common problems.

We offer starter solutions which are small-scale solutions that provide immediate benefits without disrupting core operations, help build digital confidence and skills, and prepare employees to embrace further digital technologies.

Simple solutions to meet real business needs

Be part of Shoestring

Many different people use Shoestring to improve productivity, meet sustainability goals, build digital and technology skills. They range directors to managers and operators, from production and business development teams, and include apprentices, tutors and researchers. Discover how you and your organisation would benefit from joining us:

Businesses

Education institutes

Regional organisations

Programmes and activities

Regional programmes

Develop a funded regional or sectoral programme to enable businesses to get started with digitalisation.

Hackathons

Bring together members, employees, apprentices to solve industry challenges using low cost technologies.

Workshops

Host a workshop to help your members identify which digital solutions address their top needs.

Self-start programmes

Manufacturers can join 6-8 week training programmes to help them deploy their own low-cost digital solutions.

Applicable across multiple sectors

Many companies face similar business challenges, from expensive energy bills or time wasted trying to locate jobs on the shop floor to high scrap waste and machinery downtime.

We talked to over 450 small and medium sized companies across a wide variety of sectors, and found that many of their needs were very similar, just described differently. The digital solutions required were often the same whether they worked in construction, logistics, manufacturing, or healthcare.

News

Shoestring partners with UNSW Canberra

Shoestring expands its international reach after UNSW Canberra becomes the latest collaborator to the Digital Shoestring programme. UNSW Canberra has recently become the latest academic collaborator in the Digital Shoestring programme, expanding its international...

Shoestring’s first Sustainability Requirements workshop

Shoestring held its first Sustainability Requirements workshop this month to find out how the Shoestring approach could best help companies improve their sustainability performance. The 24 participants, coming from 12 companies, who attended the workshop at the...

Scotland’s regional scoping pilot completes

Shoestring has completed its first regional scoping pilot, paving the way for the next phase of the programme in Scotland which looks at how to expand the initiative to reach more manufacturers. Supported by Scottish Enterprise, and its partners, Shoestring completed...

More news