Executive summary
What Acellas delivered, and what it means for the business
Two engagements: an assessment that gave leadership evidence for its Salesforce Revenue Cloud decision, and a contract request workflow now live in production.
Leadership weighed continuing, replacing or building against 22 documented Quote to Cash complexity items that Sales, Finance and Product accepted, rather than vendor demonstrations.
Release one routes new-business and dependency-free add-on quotes around Deal Desk, which reviewed 60% to 70% of quotes at baseline, behind one catalog and governed approvals.
Every contract request now leaves a SOX-grade audit entry, a control a newly public company must evidence to its auditors.
Quote to Cash complexity mapped to inform the platform decision
The challenge
Netskope sells more than 25 products through channel partners, and each launch added quote options, as happens at most fast-shipping platforms. Deal Desk reviewed an estimated 60% to 70% of quotes, and only 30% to 40% landed inside green discount thresholds. Product data lived in 3 places: a spreadsheet item master, the Salesforce catalog and multiple price books. Those stores held hidden, pre-GA and duplicative SKUs, sellers cross-referenced legacy and current price books by hand, and 14 cross-sell options needed reconciling. Ramp deals relied on quote groups and manual ACV overrides, and renewals started by hand. Leadership was weighing whether to continue on Salesforce Revenue Cloud, replace it or build.
Why Netskope chose Acellas
Netskope had already worked with Acellas on a Salesforce contract request workflow, and the same IT product sponsor brought us back for a scope that demanded Salesforce Revenue Cloud depth: attribute rules, bundle rules with customer-owned-asset dependencies, policy-driven pricing and discount approvals. Acellas brings two decades and more than 60 full lifecycle Salesforce Quote to Cash implementations, all for technology companies.
Results
Our experts ran an on-site workshop at Netskope's Santa Clara headquarters with Deal Desk, Sales Operations, Product and Finance, documented the Opportunity-to-Order workflow, and cataloged 22 complexity items, each with process detail, cost, benefit, configurator impact and next steps. Netskope and Acellas agreed on a first release in which new-business quotes and dependency-free add-ons bypass Deal Desk, with ramps, future start dates and rule-based approvals in scope. Our experts reconciled the item master with the Salesforce catalog across 29 offerings, mapped product dependencies, built a Configuration Cookbook and rated 6 technical debt items. That work gave Netskope one catalog, one pricing engine and governed approvals behind every partner and direct quote.
What Acellas delivered
Quote to Cash complexity analysis
Acellas documented 22 complexity items, from hidden pre-GA SKUs and duplicative SKUs to multiple price books and manual renewals, each with configurator impact and a next step.
Release-one Deal Desk bypass
We scoped release one so new-business quotes and dependency-free add-ons bypass Deal Desk, which had reviewed 60% to 70% of quotes before the project.
Item master reconciled with the catalog
Acellas reconciled the spreadsheet item master with the Salesforce catalog across 29 offerings in 7 categories, defined every SKU on 19 attributes, and built a governed Confluence item master.
Seller paths and dependencies
Our experts turned requirements from 5 sales leadership reviewers and 7 field personas into seller paths and product dependency maps, then delivered sales training.
Technical debt decision framework
We rated 6 technical debt items, 3 High and 3 Medium, and estimated the labor for both the refactor path and the new-org path.
Data migration and transformation
Netskope's product data lived in 3 stores: a spreadsheet item master, the Salesforce Product2 catalog and several price books, including a separate managed-services book and the legacy and current generations sellers cross-referenced by hand. Acellas replicated the catalog and price books, mapped each of 29 offerings in 7 product categories to its catalog records, and defined every SKU on 19 attributes, from product code, family and revenue type to unit of measure, default term and constraints. Transformation rules retired duplicative SKUs, mapped each legacy SKU to its current successor, replaced hidden SKUs with visible authorization flags, added pre-GA flags and separated customer-facing names from internal descriptions. Three dependency-mapping sessions captured prerequisite and exclusion rules. Acellas reconciled the result against the legacy price book with Product Management, and Netskope now governs one item master, with SKU change-request intake feeding the Salesforce catalog.
Business benefits
Faster quoting, pricing and approval
The Revenue Cloud platform the assessment shaped creates new-business and dependency-free add-on quotes without Deal Desk, prices them instantly and routes approvals automatically, so Netskope's reps spend their time selling to partners and customers rather than assembling quotes.
One catalog behind every partner channel
One product catalog and one pricing engine now price every quote Netskope sells through distributors, resellers and deal registrations, and the engine applies partner-tier and deal-registration discounts programmatically, so partner-sourced and direct deals follow the same pricing logic.
Governed discounting with Advanced Approvals
Salesforce Advanced Approvals routes each quote through parallel and serial chains by discount, product, term and deal size, shows reps the full chain and the current approver, and records every decision, so discounting stays inside policy and approval cycles shorten.
Contract and billing data compliant with ASC 606 and IFRS 15
Implementing contract management, amendments and renewals made Netskope's contract and billing data ASC 606 and IFRS 15 compliant, with consistent start dates, custom billing schedules and performance obligations flowing to NetSuite at booking.
Ramp deals with accurate ACV
Ramp deals phase license quantities by year inside standard configuration, and the platform calculates ACV correctly for forecasting and commissions, which retires the manual ACV overrides and the quote groups Deal Desk once built for every ramp.
Renewals, uplifts and co-terms automated
Renewals generate from contracts at order time with scheduled uplifts, including the DSPM renewal uplift, and add-ons co-terminate with existing agreements automatically, so Sales Operations stops building renewal opportunities by hand and ARR carries forward without rekeying.
Operational benefits
Amendments reps run without Deal Desk
Guided amendment flows let reps co-term, upgrade and amend active contracts themselves, and every amendment writes an auditable change to the contract record, so quarter-end execution speeds up and Deal Desk concentrates on non-standard deals.
Launches and price changes without IT
Product Management launches SKUs, moves pre-GA products to general-availability pricing and shifts sellers from the legacy to the current price book through governed catalog records and SKU change requests, so new bundles and price changes reach the field without a Salesforce release.
Real-time ARR, churn and pricing visibility
Revenue dashboards give leadership real-time ARR, MRR, churn, pricing effectiveness and order status by product line, because they draw on one catalog and line-level contract data rather than on manual ACV overrides and Order Management consolidations.
Prerequisites enforced on every quote
Product dependency rules enforce prerequisites, such as SWG licenses behind Remote Browser Isolation and Enterprise Browser, and block incompatible combinations, so no quote reaches approval missing a required component or ships a product at no charge.
One governed item master for AI
Netskope's rationalized item master retires duplicative SKUs, flags restricted SKUs instead of concealing them, separates customer-facing names from internal descriptions and records every dependency. Reporting, configurator automation and AI agents that reference the catalog now draw on product data Netskope can trust.
A platform decision on evidence
Leadership weighed continuing, replacing or building against 22 Quote to Cash complexity items that Acellas documented and Sales, Finance and Product all accepted, each with its cost and configurator impact, rather than against vendor demonstrations.
Technologies
- Salesforce Sales Cloud
- Confluence Integration
- Salesforce Revenue Cloud
- Legacy Data Migration/Transformation
- Salesforce Advanced Approvals
Audit-ready contract intake, built to 50 test cases
The challenge
Public-company controls raise the bar on every contract a sales team requests. As a newly public company, Netskope ran 3 contract steps outside Salesforce: redlining and version control, DocuSign signature, and storage of signed documents in a shared Google folder. Legal, Sales Operations, Deal Desk and Finance each needed a different view of sensitive contract data, and Netskope listed SOX-grade audit retrieval as a need-to-have. Any new automation also had to coexist with 33 after-save flows on Opportunity, a load typical of a platform that has carried many product launches.
Why Netskope chose Acellas
Netskope wanted Salesforce architecture from a partner that works only with technology companies and brings two decades and more than 60 full lifecycle Salesforce Quote to Cash implementations. Our proposal offered 2 QA models, and Netskope chose dedicated Acellas QA so an engineer independent of the build would own every test case.
Results
Acellas worked inside Netskope's Scrum cadence and shared Jira backlog, and promoted changes through 4 environments: Dev, SIT, Full Copy and Partial Copy. We organized the scope into 3 features: request and triage, visibility and access control, and case management with audit. Our architect resolved sales-hierarchy access with flows instead of custom page components, which kept the build declarative, and our QA engineer re-baselined test scripts whenever requirements changed. Netskope took the workflow live in production: reps open every request from the Opportunity with deal details in place, Okta groups drive Legal routing, reps track status without chasing Legal, and every action leaves an audit entry.
What Acellas delivered
One-click legal request from Opportunity
Acellas built 2 flows and 1 button that create a legal request from the Opportunity, fill in the customer name and Opportunity reference, and log an audit entry.
Identity-driven routing and notifications
Routing draws on 2 systems of record, Legal groups from Okta and each rep's line manager from Workday, and flows move the Account's MSA status automatically.
Role-based contract visibility
We modeled access for 7 audiences, from full Legal access to assignment-only views for Sales Operations, Deal Desk and Finance and view-only access for managers.
Dedicated QA across 4 environments
Our QA engineer documented 50 test cases against 10 user stories and carried the build through Dev, SIT, Full Copy and Partial Copy sandboxes into UAT.
Business benefits
Legal review starts at the request
Reps open every contract request from the Opportunity with customer and deal details in place, the request lands in an Unassigned legal queue, and Legal picks up, reassigns and prioritizes it in Salesforce, so review begins when a rep asks and deals reach signature sooner.
Audit-ready contract controls for SOX
Every creation, assignment, comment, attachment and permission change writes to an audit log, so Netskope can retrieve a SOX-grade record of who requested, handled and completed each contract request. A newly public company must evidence that control to its auditors.
Contract status visible to Sales
Reps and their managers receive assignment notices, weekly reminders and status changes, and the Account's MSA status moves automatically from Requested/In-Progress to Completed, so sellers, Deal Desk and Finance know the paper position before they quote or book.
Routing driven by Okta and Workday
Legal alerts go to the Legal Team group defined in Okta, and rep notifications reach the line manager Workday records, so routing and access stay correct as people join, move or leave, without an administrator editing assignment rules.
Role-based confidentiality for sensitive terms
Legal sees every case and document; Sales Operations, Deal Desk and Finance see only assigned cases, through a queue that shows 10 non-sensitive fields; managers get view-only access, which keeps privileged legal comments and documents inside Legal.
Operational benefits
Negotiation rounds prioritized for Legal
An Additional Review Required status lets reps flag customer redlines in one step, alerts the Legal owner and marks the case as a priority in the queue, so negotiation rounds move ahead of routine intake and Legal returns context on every change.
Extended teams join without oversharing
Legal owners add Product, GRC, Procurement or whole Okta groups to a case at any point, and notifications reach only the case owner, Legal owner and extended team, so specialists contribute quickly and the wider Legal team avoids notification noise.
Legal workload measured and managed
Case reporting by status, cycle time and nearing expiry, with linking, parent-child relationships and duplicate merge, gives Legal leadership a measurable view of workload and turnaround and the evidence to rebalance the queue.
Special terms travel to the Order
Negotiated special terms and the authorizing customer signatory travel from Quote to Order, so Order Management books against the terms Legal approved and Revenue Accounting sees non-standard commitments at booking.
A declarative build Netskope maintains
Resolving sales-hierarchy access with declarative automation rather than custom page code kept the workflow maintainable in an org carrying 33 after-save Opportunity automations, so Netskope's own administrators maintain and extend it without specialist code.
Production-ready against 50 test cases
Our QA engineer tested against 50 documented test cases across 10 user stories and re-baselined them whenever requirements moved, confirming that every notification, access rule and audit entry behaved as specified before Netskope took the workflow to production.
Technologies
- Salesforce Sales Cloud
- Customer Service Management
- Okta Integration
- Workday Integration
- Custom Salesforce Platform Development
- Custom Salesforce Automation Development
Begin with a conversation
Talk with the experts who did this work.