It is work, and about as arcane as you would expect a government form to be. You need to track your eligible hours for SRED on a weekly basis or throughout the week (as an employee). As an owner you need to deal with capital expenditures as well.
Are you filing yourself, or do you use one of the organizations that take a cut?
Both are viable. We use a contractor that takes a cut (~25% for < 25k claims, 20% for bigger claims IIRC), but I know of companies that do it themselves and hire a SRED specialist to review their application on an hourly contract.