NC State’s tech transfer office cut compliance risk and recovered about $200,000 in missed intellectual-property licensing fees with Process Street. The Office of Research Commercialization, which includes the Office of Technology Licensing, moves university discoveries into patents, licenses, and commercial products across NC State’s $717 million research enterprise. Nicholas LeBlanc, Assistant Director of Operations and Strategy, oversees data integrity, technology transfer workflows, federal compliance, reporting, and operational automation.
The office manages invention disclosures, license negotiations, intellectual property compliance, federal Bayh-Dole reporting, and long-term royalty obligations. Bayh-Dole requirements carry firm reporting and recordkeeping duties. Noncompliance can violate award terms and, in serious cases, put rights in a federally funded invention at risk.
Key stats inside the case study:
- $200,000 in revenue recovered from missed industry IP fees after a billing gap became visible
- 3 to 4 times faster federal utilization reporting across 400+ reports each year
- $10 million in annual revenue managed with roughly 22 staff
- 20+ year license agreements managed with royalty and milestone tracking
The Challenge: Compliance & Revenue at Risk
Before Process Street, the team managed compliance through PDF checklists, Word documents, SOPs, Google Drive folders, and database tools that did not connect or scale. Processes lived in people’s heads instead of a shared system. Staff turnover threatened to derail workflows, and critical errors, including missed fee collections, were difficult to catch.
Key pain points included:
- No visibility into process status or ownership. Managers had no fast way to see where a process stood or who owned each step. When work stalled, it was difficult to identify the bottleneck across dozens of concurrent workflows.
- Difficult task assignment and handoffs. Responsibilities were buried in email threads or siloed documents. Version-control problems created confusion and duplicate work.
- Compliance steps missed through manual oversight. Federal requirements such as the Bayh-Dole Act depend on deadlines and accurate records. Static documents and knowledge held by individuals made critical actions easier to miss.
- Long manual cycles for 400+ annual federal utilization reports. The work required financial analysis, database queries, and repeated SOP checks. Without guided workflows, each reporting round created delays and administrative pressure.
Why did you choose Process Street above its competitors?
“We looked at several tools but Process Street stood out for its interface and flexibility. It was clean, intuitive, and far more streamlined than the alternatives. The conditional logic was a game-changer for us; our processes are complex and logic-heavy, and Process Street could actually handle that without forcing us to bend our workflows to fit the software… We’ve had people leave the office and take entire processes with them. Process Street changed that. It captures the knowledge, enforces consistency, and makes us far less vulnerable to turnover.”
Nicholas LeBlanc
Assistant Director of Operations and Strategy
NC State University, Office of Technology Licensing
The Solution: Process Street Brings Structure, Control & Accountability
With Process Street, Nicholas built structured workflows across licensing, finance, and compliance:
- Bayh-Dole Compliance: Ensures federally funded IP disclosures meet agency-specific requirements using conditional logic.
- License Agreement Handoff: Collects key licensing terms so long-term agreements are set up accurately in the central database.
- Annual Utilization Reporting: Streamlines 400+ annual federal reports by linking workflow steps to pre-built database queries.
- Pre-License Compliance Check: Verifies financial and legal risks before a license is signed, with automated Google Docs creation.
- Federal Funding Review: Audits incoming grants to flag compliance obligations tied to industry or federal sponsors.
- Agreement Quality Control: Standardizes final review of disclosures and contracts before formal database entry.
Each workflow gives staff a defined sequence, owner, and completion record while still accommodating the office’s logic-heavy cases. The structure connects procedural guidance to the underlying database work instead of forcing the team to search separate SOPs during every handoff. Managers can see where work stands, follow exceptions, and refine a process without losing the institutional knowledge behind it.
How did Process Street save your department $200k?
“One of my team members was working through his process and noticed that several inventions funded by industry weren’t being billed correctly. It turned out that we weren’t notified by another department that there was a fee attached, so those agreements slipped through the cracks. Thanks to the visibility Process Street gives us, we caught it, and recovered about $200,000 in missed revenue. Without that level of transparency, we would’ve never known.”
Nicholas LeBlanc
Assistant Director of Operations and Strategy
NC State University, Office of Technology Licensing
The Results: $200K in Revenue Recovered
With Process Street, NC State’s Office of Technology Licensing recovered $200,000 in missed industry IP fees by identifying a billing gap that had gone unnoticed. The team completes more than 400 federally required utilization reports at 3 to 4 times the previous speed and manages about $10 million in annual revenue with roughly 22 staff. Long-term license agreements, some spanning more than 20 years, are tracked for royalty payments and commercialization milestones.
How does Process Street help NC State?
“Process Street doesn’t force us to change how we work, it adapts to what we need. That means we can keep improving and refining, without ever feeling boxed in by the tool.”
Nicholas LeBlanc
Assistant Director of Operations and Strategy
NC State University, Office of Technology Licensing
Required fields prevent tasks or workflow runs from being completed until the required data has been entered, reducing missed information and skipped compliance steps. Clear assignments and documented workflows make the office more resilient to turnover. Google Docs and Zapier automations also support the customer’s document-creation process and reduce administrative work.
Compliance Is Not Optional
Process Street is a single Compliance Operations Platform with Docs and Ops capability areas plus built-in AI. Docs keeps policies and SOPs governed and current. Ops turns them into assigned, automated workflows with approvals, evidence, and audit trails. Built-in AI helps teams create, run, and improve compliant processes inside the same product. For teams facing the same operational pressure, the hidden costs of compliance fire drills show why controlled execution and audit evidence matter before a deadline arrives.
Turn Critical Procedures Into Controlled Execution
Build governed workflows with Process Street.