Master Data Management (MDM) is a crucial component of life sciences, powering everything from compliance to analytics. However, even with tools like Reltio, data issues can still occur. A leading pharma company's journey highlights three common pitfalls that MDM teams often stumble into: loading bad data into MDM, blind spots in data lineage, and lack of visibility inside Reltio. To sidestep these challenges, comprehensive observability can be employed to flag issues before they hit the MDM, tracking lineage end-to-end to validate data integrity, and boosting visibility with smart observability to analyze merges or flag anomalies without extracting data. By implementing these strategies, MDM teams can cut errors, gain trust in their lineage, and free themselves from constant firefighting, ultimately making their data "bulletproof".