Morrisons' online nursery and baby equipment company said the business intelligence system has helped it strengthen its focus on current customers and realise a 20 percent growth in online sales over a four-month period.

Kiddicare has added IBM analytics software to its existing IBM e-commerce infrastructure as part of a plan to broaden its business focus beyond new customer acquisition. The retailer aimed to place more emphasis on driving repeat business, better customer retention and higher order values.

The analytics software has enabled Kiddicare to mine the large volume of data it collects, analyse customer behaviour and personalise customer communications. With this business intelligence, Kiddicare has quickly identified new sources of revenue, created appropriate customer incentive initiatives and deployed more effective marketing and communications.

Simon Harrow, technology officer at Kiddicare, said: "Previously only seven to eight percent of our business came from repeat customers, despite the fact that our satisfaction tracking said that 98 percent of our customers would recommend us. It felt counterintuitive to have a raving fan base, but no communications strategy post purchase."

Harrow said the new analytics system would now be used to help develop new Android and iPad applications and a website re-design.