Clean your purchase data before your S/4HANA migration
SAP ECC 6.0 mainstream maintenance ends on 31 December 2027, with extended maintenance available to the end of 2030. SAP has said there will be no general extension beyond that, so most ECC customers now have a firm window to plan their move.
Where the data breaks
- Every supplier and customer has to become a single business partner record in S/4HANA, and duplicate or incomplete vendor records block that conversion outright.
- Years of material master records carry inconsistent descriptions and material groups, built up by whoever happened to create each one.
- Deciding what history to bring across and what to archive is hard to do well when nobody can tell which records are still active.
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 S/4HANA migration
- Business partner conversion: vendors and customers merge into one business partner model, and every record needs to pass that conversion cleanly.
- Material master data and material groups, which carry whatever inconsistencies built up over the life of your ECC system.
- Whether you're running a greenfield, brownfield or selective approach changes how much data actually needs cleaning before it moves.
- Open items versus history: what stays live in the new system and what gets archived.
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.
- Every vendor clean enough to convert to a business partner without manual rework.
- Material groups consistent and mapped to one standard.
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 S/4HANA'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
Do we need to clean vendor data before converting to business partners in S/4HANA?
Yes. Business partner conversion merges every vendor and customer record into a single model, and duplicate or incomplete vendor records will block or corrupt that conversion, so cleaning them first avoids redoing the conversion later.
Should we clean data before or after moving to S/4HANA?
Before. Cleaning after go-live means reporting is unreliable from day one and the cleanup still has to happen, just under more pressure and inside a live system.
How do we keep spend reporting comparable after the migration?
Classify every spend line to one standard, such as UNSPSC, before it moves, so category totals in S/4HANA match what your old system reported and nothing has to be reconciled after go-live.
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.
