Seal vs ETQ Reliance

1ETQ Reliance and Seal, side by side.

ETQ Reliance and Seal are both configurable platforms for regulated quality work, and both let a team change its own workflows. ETQ Reliance, which its owner Octave now sells as Reliance, is a quality management system with more than 40 ready-to-use applications and a codeless designer for forms, workflows and rules, used across many manufacturing industries.¹ In Seal, biopharma teams configure lab, manufacturing and quality workflows on one platform around a shared ontology, so the control a risk assessment relies on is configured, tested and versioned in the work itself.

2What ETQ Reliance is built for.

Reliance is built for manufacturers that want to configure their own quality, safety and environmental processes on one cloud platform, across many sites and industries. ETQ was founded in 1992 in Massachusetts; Hexagon AB announced its acquisition in February 2022 and placed it in Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division.² In June 2025 Hexagon said ETQ would join Octave, the planned spin-off of its asset lifecycle, safety and geospatial software businesses.³ The spin-off of Octave Intelligence plc from Hexagon completed on 22 May 2026, and its shares trade on Nasdaq Stockholm and Nasdaq New York.⁴ Octave now sells the product as Reliance, formerly ETQ Reliance, and says its core functionality is unchanged by the rebrand.¹

Reliance offers more than 40 applications, among them document control, CAPA, audit management, training, supplier quality, change management and nonconformance management, which teams adapt with drag-and-drop workflow design and point-and-click forms rather than code.¹ For life sciences, Life Sciences Compliance adds complaint handling with FDA electronic medical device reporting, Part 11 and Annex 11 electronic signatures, and validation support.⁵ Lab Investigation documents out-of-specification and out-of-trend results and can open a CAPA or a nonconforming material report directly.⁶ The same platform runs environmental management and health and safety applications.¹ It is a cloud service on AWS that connects to ERP, MES, PLM, LIMS and HR systems through REST APIs and prebuilt connectors.¹ Octave’s published case studies range from Novo Nordisk and Avanos to Trane, Rheem and General Motors.⁷

Reliance applies AI mainly to analysis. Its CAPA application offers smart recommendations for root cause analysis alongside fishbone, Pareto and five-whys templates.⁸ Advanced Analytics adds AI-driven insight dashboards, a quality data lake on Snowflake that connects to tools such as Power BI, and predictive quality analytics with Acerta LinePulse.⁹

3How a failed control reaches the risk file and the work.

Both products tie risk to quality events. The difference is what a risk assessment rests on when it says a control works.

In Reliance, the Risk Register is a central repository of known hazards and their controls, with risk templates and assessments compiled from events such as complaints, corrective actions, audits and supplier issues. Teams can assess a significant risk at any step and reassess it to show effectiveness.¹⁰ The CAPA application measures and tracks risk with trend analysis,⁸ and Change Management evaluates the overall impact of a change, assesses its risks with quantitative tools before it goes ahead, starts action plans by change type and integrates with Document Control, ERP and PLM.⁷

In Seal, the risk file links to the control as it is configured and tested. In the example in Seal’s risk blueprint, CTRL-021 is a high-level stop that should close a vessel’s inlet valve before it overflows. Its verification, VER-021, failed: the sensor tripped and the close command was sent, but the inlet remained open. The failed result leads back to the control, the scenario it serves and the risk review it reopens, and the original observation is kept even if the investigation changes the explanation.

Seal also keeps three states apart. A missing result is not a pass, so the control’s effectiveness stays unestablished and the risk review stays open. A passing result is evidence, not risk acceptance, so the residual-risk decision is recorded separately. When the investigation points to a stronger control, a changeset carries the revised requirement, the instructions, capture fields and qualifications that depend on it, and the cases its retest must pass before the risk assessment relies on it.

4Configuring the quality system itself.

Both products let a quality team change its own processes after go-live. The difference is the evidence a configuration change carries with it.

Reliance’s codeless designer lets quality teams adjust workflows, forms and rules themselves, and Octave says new processes or sites can be added by configuration without custom code.¹ For life sciences, Octave describes validating configurations before promoting them, and offers two levels of validation support: a self-validation package or expert validation consulting.⁵

In Seal, a changed classification rule, approval route, calculation or closure gate is a controlled configuration change. It carries its reason, the affected requirements, the proposed configuration and its verification, and Neil can draft the configuration and the verification cases from your procedure. When the changeset is prepared for review, its selected user acceptance tests run, and publication requires current passing results for the required tests. Earlier work keeps the version it ran under. An automated check supports your team’s release decision; it is not an independent declaration of compliance. The regulatory guide sets out the approach.

5Where ETQ Reliance is the better fit.

Reliance is the better fit for manufacturers that want one configurable platform for quality, safety and environmental processes across many sites and industries.

• You run regulated businesses beyond biopharma, such as automotive, electronics or industrial manufacturing, and want one quality system across them.⁷
• You want quality, environmental management and health and safety on the same platform.¹
• Your quality team wants to design and change its own forms and workflows without code.¹
• You want quality data in a Snowflake data lake for your own BI tools, with predictive quality analytics on the line.⁹
• You make medical devices and need complaint handling with eMDR submission to FDA.⁵
• You manage engineering changes alongside quality and want them integrated with PLM and ERP.⁷

6Where Seal is the better fit.

Seal is the better fit when each finding should change how the work runs, across laboratory, manufacturing and quality in biopharma.

• You want laboratory, manufacturing and quality work on one set of records. In Seal they use a shared ontology: a sample belongs to a batch, a result comes from a test, and an investigation links to the affected work.
• You want the controls a risk assessment relies on to be configured in the workflow where they run, with their verification results linked to the assessment.
• You want a corrective action released as a verified change to the workflow, with its effectiveness measured on the runs that follow.
• You expect to keep changing the process. Each improvement becomes a new process version with its specifications, test evidence and approvals, and earlier runs keep the version they used.
• You want an AI agent that prepares the work. Neil configures the workflow from your procedure, assembles investigation evidence and drafts the configured change with its verification cases. It never releases a change on its own, and AI can be switched off for the whole organisation. In line with the EU’s draft GMP Annex 22 on AI, Neil is not used in GMP execution. It helps set up configuration, which your team verifies and releases under change control.

7Running Seal alongside ETQ Reliance.

You do not need to replace Reliance to start. Seal’s ETQ Reliance connection is set up per project on Reliance’s RESTful Web Services. Agree the applications, forms and fields your configuration exposes before mapping events to other systems; in scope are the quality application records and fields enabled through Reliance Web Services. Start with read access; any change in Reliance needs separately configured actions and controls.

Once API access and mappings are configured, Neil can:

• compare selected events, actions and later observations in a draft effectiveness review of a recurring CAPA;
• join supplier quality events with permitted ERP receipt data to investigate a supplier trend;
• collect selected quality records for an audit response and flag missing supporting evidence.

Each connection’s scope also records which system stays the source of truth. For example, Reliance can keep the risk register and existing CAPAs while one process runs in Seal and reads the records it needs. On its side, Octave describes REST APIs and prebuilt connectors for ERP, MES, PLM, LIMS and HR systems.¹

8Moving from ETQ Reliance to Seal.

Move one process first. Reliance stays the record for everything you have not moved.

1. Choose a process where a control keeps failing or a CAPA keeps recurring, such as an equipment interlock, a hold time or a release check.
2. Bring the procedure, the risk assessment that relies on the control, a representative event and the records it touches. Start with sample material, or arrange an NDA before sharing confidential records.
3. Neil proposes the workflow from the procedure, and your quality team checks it against the work. Once the scope is agreed and the inputs received, Seal prepares the first working process and its validation pack within 48 hours. Production timing then depends on scope, interfaces, migration and your release requirements.
4. Exercise the workflow and its failure cases, including a failed verification and its retest, before you approve release.
5. Agree which records move and which stay retrievable in Reliance. Within that scope, relationships, attachments, versions and available audit context are preserved, and representative records are reconciled and retrieval verified before you rely on the new workflow. Existing procedures can come across in bulk as PDFs and become structured Seal documents as each is revised.

Retention obligations continue for the records that stay in Reliance. The risk and CAPA blueprints show those workflows in detail.