BDC LIFT · For approved borrowers
Approved for BDC LIFT? Here's How Creatrixe Handles Implementation.
For Canadian SMEs who already have the BDC LIFT term sheet on the desk and now need a Canadian system integrator who can ship. Kickoff inside two weeks. First agent in production inside six. Pricing scoped to BDC's disbursement schedule, BDC reporting deliverables included, full compatibility with your BDC advisor.
The six-step implementation timeline
From signed term sheet to first BDC outcome-reporting cycle. The order matters — most of the engagements that go sideways skip step 1 and start writing code on day three. We don't.
Kickoff — align scope to disbursement
Within two weeks of term-sheet execution. We sit with you and (if you've authorised it) your BDC advisor, walk through the Advisory plan deliverables, and translate them into a development scope tied to BDC's disbursement tranches. The output is a one-page SOW with named agents, integration targets, milestones, and an invoice schedule that follows BDC's, not ours.
Discovery — your actual systems, not the diagram
One week embedded with the people who own the operational problem the loan is meant to solve. We trace the real workflow — phone, email, scheduler, CRM, ERP — and document the integration surface. No "future-state architecture" decks; we want the current state in enough detail that we can build against it without surprises. If your CRM is a spreadsheet, we say so.
Build — first agent shipped, not piloted
We build the highest-leverage agent first and ship it to production behind a controlled rollout (one location, one user group, one shift). No proof-of-concept that dies in a folder. Typical first agent for LIFT engagements: missed-call recovery (trades), reservation intake (hospitality), client intake + conflict checks (professional services), or quote follow-up (B2B).
Integration — wire to the CRM/ERP/PMS you already own
Most LIFT capital is wasted when integrators replace working systems instead of connecting to them. We integrate. HubSpot, Salesforce, Jobber, ServiceTitan, Toast, OpenTable, Clio, QuickBooks — whatever you're running. The agent becomes part of your existing operations rather than a parallel tool nobody opens.
Measurement — instrument before you scale
Calls captured, leads recovered, hours saved, contracts renewed — whatever the success metric in your Advisory plan was. We instrument from day one of build, not as a post-launch afterthought, so the first BDC reporting cycle has real numbers in it. If a metric isn't moving, we want to find out at week eight, not week thirty.
BDC reporting — the quarterly pack
Every quarter we hand you a reporting pack in the shape BDC asks for: outcome metrics, a chart, a one-paragraph honest read, and a forward look. If the system is working, that's the story. If a metric is flat, that's also the story — better to surface it on cycle one than to be answering hard questions on cycle four when the principal-postponement clock starts ticking down.
What you bring, what we bring
Implementation engagements stall when this isn't clear up front. Here's the split we use.
The borrower's side
- The executed term sheet — so we can scope to your specific disbursement schedule and approved tranche structure.
- One internal owner who can make decisions about workflow and data access. Not a committee. One name on the kickoff call.
- System access — admin or equivalent — to whatever CRM, ERP, scheduler, or phone system the agent will touch.
- Honest baseline numbers — current call volume, current missed-call rate, current quote conversion, whatever the LIFT-funded scope claims it will improve. If you don't have them, we'll help establish them in week one.
- A staff member who'll actually use the system when it's live. The technology choice fails when nobody on the operations side has skin in the rollout.
- BDC advisor contact with a one-line authorisation that we can engage them directly. Optional but recommended.
The Creatrixe side
- Canadian-incorporated system integrator status — Burnaby, BC headquarters, delivery from Canada. The clause that unlocked your 2.25% rate, satisfied.
- The build — design, development, deployment, ongoing support. Production-grade agents, not proofs of concept.
- Integration engineering for your existing stack — we don't ask you to replace working systems.
- Measurement instrumentation from day one of build, so reporting is real rather than reconstructed.
- BDC reporting deliverables on the cadence your advisor wants them — quarterly pack, optional ad-hoc.
- Change-request discipline — written, costed, BDC-impact noted, decided on. No surprise invoices.
- The honest read — if a metric isn't moving, we say so in the report and recommend the change before you spend another tranche.
What the first 90 days actually look like
A representative LIFT engagement — anonymised, but the shape is real. Mid-sized professional services firm in Ontario, ~$4M revenue, $180K LIFT disbursement, scope: client intake + conflict checks + proposal follow-up.
Day 1 → Day 90: from signed SOW to first BDC report
Kickoff, discovery, first agent shipped
- SOW signed, BDC advisor briefed
- Embedded discovery week with intake team and managing partner
- HubSpot + Clio integration map confirmed
- First agent (intake triage) live in production behind one practice group
- Baseline measurement instrumented
Conflict checks, rollout, refinement
- Second agent (conflict-check automation) live
- Intake agent rolled out to remaining practice groups
- First measurable lift: intake response time down 70%
- BDC advisor walkthrough — milestone 1 confirmed
- Second-tranche disbursement requested
Proposal follow-up, BDC reporting cycle 1
- Third agent (proposal follow-up sequences) live
- Full quarterly reporting pack delivered to client and BDC advisor
- Two metrics positive, one flat — flat one flagged with a recommended fix
- Scope-expansion conversation deferred to month 5 on measured data
The shape changes by industry — an HVAC engagement starts with missed-call recovery and a heatwave-week stress test; a restaurant engagement starts with reservation intake before the next busy season. But the cadence is constant: kickoff in two weeks, first production agent in six, instrumented measurement throughout, BDC report on quarter.
Pricing — scoped to BDC's disbursement, not a retainer
We don't run open-ended retainers on LIFT engagements. The capital structure is project-based, so the engagement is project-based. Invoice cadence follows your BDC disbursement tranches.
Typical first-disbursement engagement
Most first-time LIFT borrowers land in the $50K–$250K range for the first deployment — enough to ship 2–4 production agents, integrate with your existing CRM/ERP, instrument measurement, and fund 12 months of operations. Within that envelope, here's how the pricing structure usually breaks down on a $180K representative disbursement:
Pre-approval scoping (readiness assessment, Advisory plan deliverables, defensible budget range for underwriting) runs as a separate fixed-fee engagement, typically $5K–$15K, structured to be eligible against the loan once approved. We don't bill for sales conversations or for the kickoff call.
BDC Advisory plan compatibility
Your BDC advisor is not the competition. They're the reason the loan got underwritten in a shape that makes sense.
How we work alongside your BDC advisor — not against them
Some integrators treat the BDC Advisory layer as a hurdle to get past so the real engagement can start. We treat it as the underwriting context that makes the work defensible. Your BDC advisor wrote (or sanity-checked) the Advisory plan that got your loan approved; our implementation should align to it, not relitigate it. In practice that means:
- Direct line of communication with your advisor, with your written authorisation. Faster decisions, fewer telephone-game distortions.
- Milestone definitions match the Advisory plan's deliverables. When the advisor reviews progress at month three, the language matches.
- Reporting cadence on the schedule your advisor needs for their own BDC reporting — typically quarterly, optionally monthly during the first deployment window.
- Scope changes go through both — you decide, we cost it, advisor sees the BDC-disbursement implications before anything ships.
- No advisor replacement — we don't deliver the BDC Advisory plan and we don't pretend to. That's BDC or BDC-vetted territory, and any integrator who claims otherwise is a flag.
Net effect: your BDC advisor stays in the loop without doing administrative work, and you get a single coordinated view rather than two parallel conversations to manage.
Frequently asked — approved-borrower edition
The questions we get on every first kickoff call with an approved LIFT borrower.
I'm already approved — what do you actually need from me to start?
Three things: the executed term sheet (so we can scope to your specific disbursement schedule), your BDC advisor's contact with a one-line written authorisation to engage them directly, and 45 minutes with whoever owns the operational problem the loan is meant to solve. From there we draft a kickoff plan inside 5 business days and target a signed SOW within 10. No 50-page intake form.
Can you talk to my BDC advisor directly?
Yes — and we prefer it. With your written authorisation we engage your BDC advisor directly on milestone definitions, disbursement-tied deliverables, and reporting cadence. Most BDC advisors appreciate having a Canadian integrator they can call rather than relaying everything through the borrower. It keeps scope honest in both directions and shaves weeks off the calendar.
What's your project lead time?
Kickoff inside two weeks of term-sheet execution. First agent in production inside six weeks. Full first-disbursement scope (typically 2–4 agents plus integration) live in 10–16 weeks depending on the integration surface and how clean your existing data is. We don't run six-month discovery phases — they're the most common failure mode in this category.
Do you charge during the BDC approval phase or only after disbursement?
For post-approval engagements (this page), we invoice against BDC's disbursement schedule — so the first invoice lands after the first tranche disburses, not before. For pre-approval work (readiness assessment, scoping the Advisory plan deliverables), we have a separate fixed-fee engagement, usually $5K–$15K, that's structured to be eligible against the loan once approved. We don't bill for sales conversations or for the kickoff call.
What if my project scope changes mid-implementation?
Scope drift is normal — what's not normal is hiding it. We run change requests in writing with cost, timeline, and BDC-disbursement impact on a single page so you can decide and, if relevant, loop your BDC advisor in. Small reshuffles inside the original envelope we absorb; net-new scope gets its own SOW addendum. No surprise invoices, no scope creep we don't surface in the next status email.
Do you provide BDC reporting deliverables?
Yes. Every engagement is instrumented from day one — calls captured, leads recovered, hours saved, contracts renewed, whatever the success metric for your LIFT scope was. We hand you a quarterly reporting pack in the shape BDC asks for, with the raw numbers, the chart, and a one-paragraph honest read. If a metric isn't moving, that's in the pack too — better surfaced on cycle one than discovered on cycle four.
What happens after the 24-month principal-payment postponement ends?
BDC LIFT lets you postpone principal payments for up to 24 months — interest accrues, principal sleeps. By month 24, the system we built should be generating measurable cash improvement (recovered revenue, headcount avoidance, contract retention) that covers the principal payment when it kicks in. If it isn't, you should know that well before month 22, and our quarterly reporting is designed to make that visible early enough to act on — including the option to descope, refactor, or in honest cases, refinance.
What if my approval came in smaller than I asked for?
Common — BDC often approves a smaller first tranche with the option to expand once the SME has demonstrated execution. We'll re-scope to match the actual disbursement and bias toward shipping one high-value agent in production rather than three thin ones across the surface. The expand-on-proof model usually beats the front-loaded one anyway; it lets you go back to BDC with real numbers when you ask for tranche two.
One last honest pre-call note
The short version of what we'll tell you on the 60-minute kickoff call, so you can decide whether the call is worth your time:
- If your approved scope is fundamentally a "we'll figure out AI" envelope with no measurable target, we'll push back hard on day one and ask you to define what success looks like before we write a line of code.
- If your operations team isn't in the kickoff call, we'll ask to reschedule. Building AI for a CEO who can't get the front-line owners in the room is the second-most-common failure mode in this category.
- If your BDC advisor hasn't been briefed on your integrator choice, we'll suggest a three-way call before SOW. It costs nothing and removes most of the friction in tranche releases.
- If your current systems are genuinely broken (no CRM, no scheduler, paper-based intake), the first conversation may be about fixing the foundation with a slice of the LIFT capital before adding AI on top.
- If none of the above applies and you have a clear operational target, we're probably the right shop for the build.
For the broader picture of how we think about AI engagement structure: read the BDC LIFT program guide, or check the AI Agents services page for the underlying delivery model that LIFT-funded engagements run on top of.
Got the term sheet? Let's book the kickoff.
60-minute kickoff call. Bring the term sheet, your operations owner, and ideally your BDC advisor on the line. We'll walk through the disbursement-aligned scope, the integration surface, and the first 90 days. Within 10 business days you'll have a signed SOW and a kickoff date.