Improving data quality is crucial for organizations to make informed decisions, reduce operational costs, and increase trust in their data. It requires a multifaceted approach that involves establishing clear standards, eliminating data silos, implementing automated validation checks, conducting regular audits, establishing review processes, automating data observability, and fostering a culture of data quality awareness. By following these eight steps and best practices, teams can build more reliable data pipelines, reduce firefighting efforts, and create a competitive advantage in their industry. Additionally, understanding the causes of data quality issues, such as input errors, infrastructure failures, incorrect transformations, invalid assumptions, and ontological misalignment, is essential for implementing effective solutions like automated data observability with Metaplane.