Big data is a big deal nowadays in the world of technology, with smartphones, digital devices and cloud-based services flooding our everyday lives.

With the enormous amount of mass data generated there is now a need for it to be analysed and communicated. The application of big data can ultimately inform better decision making in numerous fields such as education, public health, finance, transport and agriculture.

Everyday activities leaves a trail of data - listening to music or reading a Kindle generate data, smartphones collect data on how you use it and using the web browser on your phone also collects information. Credit card companies collect data on where you shop and what you buy.

The application of big data is so far endless and one usage is to optimise businesses.

According to research by big data analytics company, Datameer, revenues in big data business analytics worldwide will risen from $122 billion in 2015 to over $187 billion in 2019.

Helen Wang, CEO of Business Big Data's (BBD) London office, a Chinese data solution company, told China Daily that "big data has become a phenomenon and transformed business with applications such as mobile payments and online banking".

Wang added, "This then created a very big need to manipulate all this data and interpret the business activities in a more efficient and transparent way to improve the performance and convenience for the consumer."

BBD's role is to analyse masses of data and pin down specific information that is useful and one way of using this data is to provide banks with a risk assessment platform to evaluate and identify risks in lending money to SMEs.

Daniel Pu, senior vice-president and general manager of BBD told China Daily from company's head office in Chengdu that banks are reluctant to lend to SMEs because of a lack of financial information.

"BBD's platform is formulated to better evaluate and measure the risk of SMEs to enable banks to lend money, support and calculate financial cost for an efficient lending process," Pu said.

Alan Barrell, a professor who is Cambridge University's entrepreneur-in-residence, noted that supporting SMEs are vital for the economy, "Many start-up and small companies are not getting the finance and this affects the number of companies that are growing and scaling which are needed in order to grow the economy."

As big data grows, there will be concerns over data security and privacy, some organizations have adopted steps such as promoting a culture of security and having in place an incident response plan to help alleviate concerns about data security, privacy and ethics.

"Big Data, if properly and ethically managed and handled, will help us all to have better information for planning, decision making, working and living," Barrell insisted, "There will be more new and interesting jobs created as Big Data and other new technologies become commonplace as part of life."