Background
The Marketplace private offer selling motion differs from the standard 2-Tier channel motion, requiring new processes and system capabilities. Private offer transactions occur directly within the Marketplace portal, either to a Reseller or directly to the Customer, with the Marketplace provider handling invoicing and payment collection.
Marketplace Private Offer Quote-to-Cash Process Flow
Creating a Quote for a Private Offer in Frontline: Guided Experience
Frontline provides a guided quoting experience tailored for creating Marketplace private offers involving term licenses and professional services, which include both standard offerings and custom engagements based on Statements of Work (SOWs). As part of the quote creation process, users are prompted to input Marketplace-specific information, such as AWS or Azure account IDs and other required customer or deployment details.
Marketplace Account Details
When a quote is designated as a “Marketplace quote”, the system dynamically displays additional fields relevant to private offer transactions. Users can specify the Marketplace provider—AWS or Azure—and indicate whether the offer is intended for a direct customer or a reseller. Both reseller and buyer account IDs must be entered directly on the quote page, as these are essential for resale authorization/private offer publication in Marketplace portal.
Offer Expiry Date and Agreement Start Date
Each quote for private offer includes an expiry date, which defines the deadline for customer acceptance of the private offer in Marketplace portal. This date is set in UTC. AWS permits cancellations up to 48 hours after acceptance, while Azure allows cancellations within 72 hours. The agreement start date is determined by the customer’s acceptance of the offer, with sales order creation initiated 48 hours later for AWS and 72 hours later for Azure.
Delayed License Fulfillment Date
For scenarios requiring a delayed fulfillment start date, the “ship hold” process—managed by Sales Support Ops—has replaced the previous method of using quote to provide delayed start dates. The ship-hold process aligns with the new automated workflow that prevents changes to quotes once a private offer is published, while still allowing flexibility in start dates without requiring revisions. For more information, contact Sales Support Ops.
Selecting Product or Professional Services
In both AWS and Azure Marketplaces, software products and professional services are listed separately, hence they must be offered as two distinct private offers each requiring its own corresponding quote to be attached. The quoting system enforces mutual exclusivity between product and professional service selections—once one is chosen, the other cannot be added.
Only software products currently listed on the Marketplace will be available for selection. All professional service SKUs—standard and custom—are eligible for private offers. Custom SKUs are managed in admin mode, and Sales Support Ops can assist with adding or editing SKUs and attaching the SOW before quote approval.
For Azure, professional services are only available via direct private offers to customers in the US, UK, and Canada, and not through resellers.
Pricing and Discounting
Both the Marketplace discount and total net price fields in the quote are editable. The Marketplace discount is typically lower than the base discount which takes into account transaction fee. Deal approval routing is based on the base discount. The total net price reflects the Marketplace TCV extended to the reseller or customer.
Primary and Approved Quote for Private Offer
Only one Marketplace quote per opportunity should be marked as “primary” and “approved” for private offer publication. While multiple quotes can be approved, only the primary quote is eligible for publishing. Once approved, the Sales Representative initiates the publishing process by emailing Sales Support Ops with the quote number.
If overage consumption is required for an NC2 deployment, this should be included in the Sales Rep’s email. Overage support requires an NC2 subscription and will be enabled in Phase 2 of Marketplace automation. After accepting the offer on AWS or Azure Marketplace, customers must complete their setup in the Nutanix Portal.
Publishing a Private Offer
Sales Support Operations uses Raft, a home-grown SaaS application, to manage the end-to-end process of creating and publishing private offers in the Marketplace. When a Sales Representative initiates a request by email, including the quote number, Raft enables users to retrieve the corresponding quote details and legal documents in PDF format.
Once all validations are complete, Sales Support Ops either creates the private offer in draft mode or publish directly to the Marketplace portal with a one-click action. If a draft is created, it must be published through Raft when ready.
Sales Order Creation (Post Customer Private Offer Acceptance)
Once a private offer is accepted by the customer and the Marketplace agreement is created, a cancellation grace period applies—48 hours for AWS and 72 hours for Azure. This grace period allows the customer to cancel the offer if needed.
After the grace period expires, Sales Operations initiates the sales order creation using a one-click action in the Raft application. This action automatically generates a sales order in Salesforce, where it enters a pending state.
Following this, Sales Support Operations notifies Order Operations of the newly created sales order number. Order Operations is then responsible for validating the sales order and submitting it for fulfillment and invoicing. A Netsuite Sales Order is created.