A few interesting stories surfaced this week that help shed better light on some of the lesser-covered companies of those willing to harness their customer data. A lot are in a privileged position in this regard, including most in the financial services industry – one of the fastest ones to get knack-deep into the whole big data trend.

ANZ Bank is one financial institution that provides a very good example of that. The Australian bank uses its knowledge about the business owner it serves to improve service, while others such as ZestFinance are taking the same data-driven approach to a whole different level.

ZestFinance is a service that identifies people who have a low credit score, but might still be eligible for loans. Unlike the traditional system ZestFinance tracks differentiators such as a history of paying off debts, employment status etc and offers the capability to extract more accurate conclusions out of this data to large banks and credit companies.

Another interesting twist to big data comes from Twitter. Two studios created a project that visualizes ‘food sentiment’ according to geographical location: it finds tweets that are associated with certain brands, identifies what people think about it and display that info in real time. Sometime, somewhere FoodMood might just save a retailer some time and money.

Speaking of spending, government agencies are also harnessing their unique access to certain information for good. Agencies in Australia are realizing savings in areas such as public safety, while Rick Perry apparently saved $3 million in campaign money thanks to market research.