Vantage replaces the bank's two-decade-old Commercial Electronic Office Portal and aims to bring a "consumer-like experience" to Wells' commercial and corporate clients, an executive said. Wells Fargo on Monday announced the launch of a new commercial banking platform -- a revamp the San Francisco-based bank says leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to help clients personalize their accounts. The platform, called Vantage, replaces the bank's Commercial Electronic Office Portal, or CEO Portal, which it launched over two decades ago to serve its commercial banking and corporate and investment banking clients. Vantage is designed to meet the evolving needs of corporate and commercial clients, said Reetika Grewal, head of digital for Wells Fargo commercial banking and corporate and investment banking. The bank is in the process of migrating CEO Portal users to Vantage accounts, Grewal added.

SOMEBODY LESS driven than Tom Siebel would have long since thrown in the towel. In 2006 the entrepreneur, then 53 years old, sold his first firm, Siebel Systems, which made computer programs to track customer relations, to Oracle, a giant of business software. That left him a billionaire--but a restless one. In 2009, a few months after Mr Siebel had launched a new startup, he was trampled by an elephant while on safari in Tanzania. When, a dozen surgeries later, he could work again, the enterprise almost went bankrupt.

Bengaluru: Akshaya Patra provides mid-day meals to 1.8 million school children across India. The NGO came to Accenture a couple of years ago with a simple query: how do we feed more children? The consultant looked at the supply chain and then worked with three startups from different domains for a solution. One startup used data from IoT sensors to streamline cooking processes and monitor the quality of food. Another one used machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to predict the demand for food. And a third startup used blockchain to put feedback from schools on a distributed ledger in a tamper-proof manner.

Working in banking for many years, I've seen quite a few state-of-the-art processes and technologies become outdated and then obsolete. Everything from adding machines to paper ledgers once had their day. Business always changes and evolves. But banks that cannot keep pace with client expectations inevitably fall behind – and often fail. That's a real concern I have for today's commercial banks.

SOMEBODY LESS driven than Tom Siebel would have long since thrown in the towel. In 2006 the entrepreneur, then 53 years old, sold his first firm, Siebel Systems, which made computer programs to track customer relations, to Oracle, a giant of business software. That left him a billionaire--but a restless one. In 2009, a few months after Mr Siebel had launched a new startup, he was trampled by an elephant while on safari in Tanzania. When, a dozen surgeries later, he could work again, the enterprise almost went bankrupt.

Sharp Corp. on Monday released three new models of its RoBoHon humanoid robot with a wider range of use for families and corporate clients. The new lineup -- two walking models and one that remains seated -- focuses more on family users with small children, who can experience "life with robots," the company said during an event in Tokyo. The number of apps that can be loaded on the robots will gradually increase to 46 from the current 30, the company said. These include an app that sends an image taken by the robot of a family member returning home to a user's email address. Users can try real-time monitoring of their homes through the app for an extra monthly charge of ¥300 plus tax.

Many corporations still have manual steps in the way they process outstanding invoices. But Rodney Gardner of Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- and other bankers -- are starting to offer their corporate clients a way to automate the handling of incoming payments. The service is proving to be valuable both for the banks and the corporations. Gardner invites clients to give him a ledger of a month's worth of the money owed to them by their customers. He then runs the information through a system of cloud-based software that BofA calls Intelligent Receivables.

LinkedIn made it passé to send dozens of résumés to potential employers. Now Debut is finding the perfect match for graduates with personality tests and math quizzes, degrees be damned. It's a British competitor to New York-based WayUp, and investors here seem to like its targeted approach to recruitment: the startup has just raised $6.7 million (£5 million) to make its recommendation algorithms for job-seeking graduates smarter. Debut already has 60 corporate clients, including Google, Apple and Barclays, that pay it an annual subscription to parse the data flood of graduate applicants who have completed psychometric and personality tests on its app. "Most jobs applications have generic information," says founder Charlie Taylor, a former consultant at Ernst & Young who also ranked on Forbes' 30 Under 30 in European tech in 2017.

Imagine walking into Starbucks, getting the coffee, and telling the barista, "Thanks for the coffee … send me an invoice, and I'll pay you in three months." So offered Paul Christensen, CEO of Previse, in an interview with PYMNTS, as an illustration of the traditional ways in which bills get paid. But late payments can have dire consequences up and down the buyer/supplier relationship, especially the one between large enterprises and a plethora of small suppliers. For large buyers, deciding who to pay and when can be an inefficient paper chase. For small suppliers, waiting for money means a tougher operating environment.

With an increase in the number of FinTech startups, banks are now trying to collaborate with them, thereby leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, to serve their customers better. Also, with small finance banks and payments banks coming in, banks want to get the most of the newer technology. Yes Bank has embarked on a journey to setup a world-class SMAC (Social-Mobile-Analytics and Cloud) support system, as it believes that this will play a key role in enhancing the overall customer delivery and service process. Yes Bank Chief Digital Officer Ritesh Pai says, "Over the last two years, our dedicated teams have extensively worked to set up a mobility platform, CRM system and also an analytics platform, which is tightly integrated with various internal and external data sources including unstructured data from various web and social sources which is often referred to as Big Data," he adds. The bank recently launched the Yes Fin-tech accelerator.