Why Data Quality is the Foundation of Great Products

3 MINS

# Why Data Quality is the Foundation of Great Products

In my experience building products for wealth management and asset management, I've seen one pattern repeat: bad data leads to bad decisions. It doesn't matter how elegant your algorithms are or how intuitive your interface is. If the underlying data is unreliable, users lose trust.

Data quality isn't glamorous work, but it's essential.

The Hidden Cost of Poor Data

At Eton Solutions, we integrate with market data vendors, custodian banks, and client platforms. Each integration is a potential source of data inconsistency.

What goes wrong when data quality slips:

Reconciliation failures. When book of records doesn't match custodian reports, operations teams spend hours investigating.

Incorrect reporting. Regulatory reports with errors create compliance risk and erode client confidence.

Feature distrust. Users stop relying on dashboards and analytics because they've been burned before.

Building Quality Into the Process

Rather than treating data quality as an afterthought, I've learned to build it into the product development process:

Define data contracts early. When integrating with external systems, specify expected formats, ranges, and update frequencies upfront.

Implement validation at ingestion. Catch anomalies before they propagate through the system.

Create feedback loops. When users report discrepancies, trace them back to the source and fix the root cause.

Data Quality as a Product Feature

In wealth management, clients expect accuracy. A platform that shows stale prices or miscalculates positions won't survive long, regardless of its other features.

I've come to see data quality not as a technical concern but as a core product feature. It deserves the same attention as user experience or performance.

The Long Game

Improving data quality is incremental work. You won't fix everything in one sprint. But consistent attention compounds over time. Systems become more reliable. Users become more confident. That trust is hard to earn and easy to lose.

Bridging the Gap Between Technical Teams and Business Stakeholders

The Power of Deep Domain Knowledge in Product Management

Narendran skipped presentations and built real AI products.

Narendran Shanmugasundharam was part of the September 2025 cohort at Curious PM, alongside 13 other talented participants.