Online retailers fail to use data to commercial advantage because the amount of information is overwhelming, according to ecommerce solutions provider eCommera.

A new report by eCommera shows more than six in 10 retailers said “data silos” were to blame – meaning lots of pots of information that are hard to bring together in an intelligible way.

Nearly four in 10 said marketing, merchandising and operations teams worked independently when evaluating business performance.

This exacerbates the problem by failing to adopt an integrated view.

The findings were despite 41 per cent of respondents admitting that businesses managing to interpret and act on big data would beat their rivals.

Just 16 per cent of firms said their data analytics package gave them the visibility they needed to make decisions.

“In the online world, the level of co-ordination required is extraordinary,” said Michael Ross, co-founder and chief scientist of eCommera.

“Whereas a physical retailer can rattle off what their key KPIs are, most people don’t understand the drivers of an online business and there are a lot of people focussing on the wrong metrics.”