Fund your digital transformation
Rolling out an ERP, connecting an MES, hardening the network, moving to the cloud: these projects are expensive in licences, integration and internal time. Several programs cover part of all three.
- ERP rollout
- MES rollout on the shop floor
- Digital diagnostic and roadmap
- Cybersecurity project
- Production data capture and dashboards
- Migration to the cloud
- Licences, integration and data migration
- Hardware and shop-floor terminals
Programs for digital transformation
The diagnostic and the plan are often funded by one program, the rollout by another. Filing them in the right order changes the total actually collected.
- Municipal · PME MTL
Circuit Numérique
Continuous intake$9,000 - Provincial · Initiative québécoise pour la construction 4.0
IQC 4.0
ClosedUp to $50,000 under stream 2 - Provincial · Revenu Québec
C3i
Continuous intake15% to 25% of the cost of the assets - Provincial · Ministère de l'Économie, de l'Innovation et de l'Énergie (MEIE)
Primo-adoptants (Early adopters)
OpenUp to $75,000
Planning a project like this?
How funding works for a digital project
A digital project is not funded like a machine purchase, because it does not come down to an equipment invoice. Most of the real cost sits elsewhere: integration, data migration, configuration, and the time your own staff spend on it. Canadian programs reflect that and almost always separate two stages — a diagnostic or digital-plan component, then a rollout component — with different rules and different rates.
That split has a practical consequence: starting with the rollout forfeits the diagnostic component, while the reverse is not true. A funded digital plan also produces the very document the agency will ask for to justify the rollout. This is one of the rare cases where filing order does not merely optimize the total: it determines access.
- 01
The diagnostic and the plan
The process audit, the solution selection and the roadmap are funded — and then serve as supporting evidence for the rollout.
- 02
Licences and integration
Purchase or subscription, configuration, data migration, interfaces between systems, and integrator mandates.
- 03
Associated hardware
Servers, workstations, sensors and data-capture equipment usually fall under the investment tax credit rather than the grant.
- 04
Internal time
Hours your employees put into the project qualify under several programs, provided they are tracked from the outset.
Frequently asked questions about digital transformation
Circuit Numérique PME funds digital transformation for SMEs — ERP, process automation, cybersecurity — covering part of the rollout costs. IQC 4.0, from Quebec's ministry of the economy, innovation and energy, funds the diagnostic and the digital plan upstream. The C3I, a Revenu Québec tax credit, applies to the associated computer hardware. Primo-adoptants, from Investissement Québec, targets companies adopting an innovation before the market has generalized it. The exact combination depends on your region, your size and how far along the project already is.
Increasingly yes, but rarely for their full duration. Programs that accept subscription pricing generally fund the first commitment period — often twelve or twenty-four months — as a rollout cost, not the recurring subscription that follows. Integration and configuration fees billed by the vendor or the integrator are, by contrast, almost always eligible. It is therefore worth having the supplier's quote broken down line by line rather than receiving it as a single figure.
Yes, under several programs, and it is often the most under-reported item. The hours your employees devote to the project — process mapping, data migration, testing, training colleagues — qualify when they are documented. The condition is the tracking: a timesheet kept during the project is accepted, an estimate reconstructed afterwards is challenged. Putting that tracking in place on day one takes minutes and regularly accounts for a significant share of the file.
Yes, and it is an often-forgotten component. Network hardening, segmentation, backup and disaster recovery, strong authentication and staff awareness all fall within the scope of digital transformation programs. Some agencies go further and require a minimum set of security measures before granting the rollout funding itself: treating cybersecurity as a line item of the project, rather than as a separate expense, therefore pays twice.
On this kind of project the risk is not failing to qualify: it is filing out of order and forfeiting the diagnostic component by starting with the rollout. Hubvention sets the sequence before the first purchase order goes out — which program for the plan, which for the rollout, which for the hardware, on what dates and under which stacking caps — then carries the mandate: drafting, filing, defending the file with the agency and follow-through until payment. The initial assessment is free; fees are set case by case in the engagement letter, before work begins.