Valarie King-Bailey’s journey as a business leader began in 1976 when she entered the University of Wisconsin – Madison College of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She always knew that one day she will become an entrepreneur. She prioritizes her study over her passion to become an entrepreneur and never conceived of starting a business without first completing her education. She graduated with a B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering in 1982 and went on to pursue an M.B.A. from Keller Graduate School of Management in Chicago. She asserts, “The completion of my full education in engineering and business laid the foundation for my success.”
Today, Valarie is leading a company and serving as CEO of OnShore Technology Group, an independent Chicago-based consultancy founded in 2004 specializing in Independent Validation and Verification (IV&V) services and solutions.
OnShore Technology Group
“Life sciences companies are our target market,” says Valarie. These companies seek to bring new products to market faster. In pursuit of their business objectives, they leverage advanced enterprise technologies and software applications that help them achieve efficiencies in pursuit of their business objectives. The U.S. FDA (FDA) mandates that all such technologies must be VALIDATED. Thus, OnShore Technology Group is an Independent Validation & Verification (IV&V) firm.
OnShore provides a portfolio of software products and services that help life sciences companies meet FDA regulatory mandates for validation. Its flagship software application is called ‘ValidationMaster™’. This solution automates the full lifecycle of validation and delivers an automated, paperless process to help life sciences companies ensure regulatory compliance while maintaining operational efficiencies. The most popular service offering is ValidationPro℠ – A “turnkey” professional service that delivers a fully validated system with minimal impact on the client’s organization. The team at OnShore conducts all project management activities, prepare all documentation, execute all test scripts and summarize the entire project. The benefits to the client are that they get to adopt cloud or mobile applications quickly with minimal impact to their production operations while ensuring sustained compliance.
Making Impact through Innovation
Before the development and delivery of OnShore‘s ValidationMaster™ suite, validation was a paper-based manual process. This process was very inefficient and time-consuming for most companies, and because of the regulatory requirement to produce validation documentation, many life sciences companies were restricted in their rapid adoption of these technologies and wasted precious time that could have been used to bring new products to market faster.
The product, ValidationMaster™ ushered in the era of Enterprise Validation Management and Quality. For many in the life sciences community, automation was viewed as a luxury and not a necessity. Since COVID, many companies now view automation as a necessity and not a luxury.
As organizations were forced to close their offices, many life sciences companies sought ways to become more efficient and thus adopted the ValidationMaster™ at a rapid pace during the pandemic. The management states, “Many of our clients were seeking to develop new vaccines and COVID products and quickly bring them to market through automated supply chain management. ValidationMaster™ helped them do this quickly and with minimal impact to their organizations.” In 2021, ValidationMaster™ received the Global 100 award for the Best Software Solution for IV&V. The company also earned a spot on the coveted 2021 INC. 5000 list of the Fastest Growing Companies in America.
Challenges with Rapid Tech Advancements
The latest challenge is keeping up with the rapid adoption of ValidationMaster™ as more and more global companies seek to deploy this valuable solution to automate their validation processes. OnShore has added a ValidationMaster™ Training Academy to help its clients learn and use the application at their own pace.
The Love for Literature and Inspiration
The most influential book for technology companies that Valarie has ever read is ‘Crossing the Chasm’ by Geoffrey A. Moore. His follow up book ‘Inside the Tornado’ is MUST READING for anyone seeking to build a business in the technology industry. Valarie also loved the book ‘Good to Great” by Jim Collins. She mentions, “Good to Great taught me how to focus on what I am good at, what can I make money at and what I have a passion about. The intersection of these three things will direct your efforts. It is a simple yet profound concept for building a GREAT business and not just a good one.” She further adds, “Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado taught me how technology companies grow and achieve market success.” She finds that these 3 books have had a profound impact on how she developed OnShore Technology Group.
Remote Working during the Pandemic
As per Valarie, moving the company’s operations remotely during the pandemic was easy. OnShore Technology Group is a flexible workplace. Many of its employees already had home offices. The teams already were using Zoom and Microsoft Teams for meetings since it is dispersed around the world. Thus, when the pandemic hit, there was not much of a “transition” for the team. They just simply did not use the office locations for work. Valarie opines, “We were able to effectively social distance, and no one in the organization got COVID. We all have been vaccinated but are still taking precautions in light of the delta variant. We will remain vigilant until this crisis ends.”
Values that make the Organization Great
OnShore values hard work, discipline, honesty and integrity, and customer service excellence. The team works hard to earn the clients trust and their business. With every engagement, the focus is on providing outstanding service and treat the customers with the care that they deserve. Valarie says, “We are passionate about our work, and we love what we do. OnShore Management treats every employee with respect, and we often seek their advice and input on how we can make the company better.”
OnShore flexible work environment is a hit with the employees. According to Valarie, it is a win-win-win where customers win because employees work hard to fulfil their objectives, and OnShore wins because its employees are dedicated and the employee wins and enjoys the benefits of a flexible work environment and rewards for outstanding work.
Future Goals
OnShore seeks to be the global leader in advanced testing solutions worldwide. OnShore Technology Group sees itself in markets beyond life sciences where it strives to help companies meet regulatory imperatives and accelerate their business objectives through the adoption of advanced technologies with minimal defects.
Believe in yourself!
Valarie’s advice to emerging entrepreneurs is “Believe in yourself and pursue your passion.” She adds, “Don’t be afraid of hard work because the rewards are great. Think big. The world has many challenges, and we need more innovation to solve the issues of climate change, aggressive viruses that can destabilize the world, new energy solutions, infrastructure challenges and new solutions that improve life on this planet. Recognize that you are the next generation.”
