Clean your purchase data before your Oracle EBS migration
Oracle has repeatedly extended Premier Support for E-Business Suite 12.2, most recently through at least 2037, so there's no near-term forced deadline. The trigger for most EBS customers is a business decision to modernise, not an end-of-support date.
Where the data breaks
- Purchasing categories and supplier records have been customised over many years, so the category structure reflects history more than current spend.
- Supplier sites and duplicates across operating units make it hard to see one supplier as a single relationship.
- Fusion's import formats are fixed, and they reject messy records rather than tolerating them the way older customisations did.
What it costs to leave it
Bad data doesn't stay behind when you migrate. It gets carried into the new system, where it causes extra test runs, a delayed go-live, and spend reports nobody trusts once the dust settles.
Where this fits in your migration
Plan and choose a partner
The business case is agreed and an implementation partner is chosen.
Assess the data
What exists, what to move, and what state it is in. Pearstop starts here, by checking and classifying your purchase and supplier data.
Design the new system
Processes, fields and how old data maps to new. Pearstop maps the cleaned data to the new system's fields.
Test the move
Before go-live, your partner tests the move by loading the data into a trial version of the new system, often several times. We hand over the cleaned data in the format the new system imports, so those tests don't fail on bad records.
Go live
The new system goes live for your teams.
Run
New invoices stay classified, so reporting doesn't slip back.
A mid-sized migration often takes six to twelve months; larger SAP and Oracle programmes often run a year or more. Data problems usually show up during the test runs, when there is least time to fix them.
Your teams, who own the data.
Keeps systems, access and integrations running through the move.
Sets up the new system.
Cleans and classifies the data.
The data that matters in a Oracle Fusion migration
- Purchasing categories, which usually need consolidating onto one standard before they'll report cleanly in Fusion.
- Suppliers and supplier sites, where duplication across operating units is common.
- Fusion's import formats, which are stricter than EBS about what a valid record looks like.
What good data looks like
- One record per supplier, with no duplicates across entities.
- Every spend line labelled to one standard (UNSPSC or your own).
- Item and material descriptions written the same way.
- Units of measure consistent.
- Inactive suppliers and items flagged, not migrated.
- Every field mapped to the new system and documented.
- Purchasing categories mapped to one standard.
- One supplier record with clean sites underneath it.
How Pearstop handles it
The data doesn't need to be clean first. AI classification handles the clear cases, and a person reviews anything uncertain. UNSPSC labels are mapped to Oracle Fusion's fields, in the format your migration needs. New invoices stay classified after go-live, so reporting doesn't slip back into the same mess.
Work with your partner
Most migrations run through an implementation partner. We work alongside them, or directly with you. Your partner sets up the new system; we give them clean, classified data in the format their import tools need. Nobody's scope changes, and your partner's team can spend their time on the new system instead of fixing records.
Why start early
Bring us in when you assess the data, not after the first test run fails. You find duplicates, free-text lines and missing categories while there is still time to fix them, nothing has to be cleaned twice, and the test runs go faster because the data goes in cleanly. Some problems only show up once you look closely at how the data behaves, which is why it pays to work with someone who handles this data every day.
Frequently asked questions
What data should we clean before moving from Oracle EBS to Fusion?
Purchasing categories and supplier records first, since Fusion's import formats reject records that don't fit its structure, and messy categories or duplicate suppliers are the most common cause of failed loads.
How long does it take to prepare EBS supplier data for Fusion?
It depends on how many operating units and how many years of accumulated duplicates there are, but starting the assessment early, alongside the rest of the migration, avoids finding the problem during a failed test load.
Related reading
Send us 200 lines
We'll classify a sample of your purchase data and send it back so you can see what good data looks like before you commit to cleaning the rest.
