Customer service could be a nightmare, with client queries bouncing from one area to another before solutions were found.
Now cash management has found a home in First Union's commercial bank, which Maffitt heads, and it is racking up a string of successes.
Maffitt and others at First Union largely credit Nina Archer with putting the Charlotte bank out front in the cash management industry.
Under Archer's leadership last year, the group of 500 people pulled in revenues of $436 million, making it the country's fourth-largest cash manager and a major source of fee income for First Union.
Eight of 10 First Union cash management products rank in the top 10 nationally based on market share, according to a 1996 survey by Ernst & Young.
The division processes payments for some of the country's largest companies, including more than a million checks each month from Sprint long-distance customers.
It helps corporate treasurers nationwide determine how much money they have to invest each day.
But the cash management group is best known for making inroads into the small and mid-sized business markets. With Internet and personal computer products it inexpensively gives those clients "real-time" access to their accounts.
Archer has pushed for ways to service those smaller clients since she led cash management for North Carolina territory.
"It was Nina who drove that," said Don MacLeod, who in 1992 handpicked Archer as his successor to lead cash management. He is now general banking executive for First Union in Tennessee.
Her success has drawn national attention.
"The small and middle markets are an important part of their customer base, and that's the fastest-growing sector of the industry," said Larry Forman, assistant directory of cash management consulting for Ernst & Young. "I expect that's largely responsible for their success."
Archer said she has been fascinated by the technological possibilities of cash management since her days as a commercial leader at Ameritrust in Cleveland.
"I loved the nuts and bolts of it all, finding ways to bring all the products to the customers," she said.
Archer joined First Union's cash management group as a salesperson in 1984. Two years later she created a customer service unit for the group, the first of several innovations she introduced before they were fashionable throughout the industry.
Last summer she was put on First Union's Key Management Committee, a group of about 60 executives who help chart corporate strategies.
That move was a tribute to Archer and to cash management, one of the fee-generating businesses First Union has vowed to bolster.
"Nina often had a different view," MacLeod said. "She liked to play devil's advocate and was very creative. Sometimes things she said would sound so different, but then you'd listen to her and it would make sense."
MacLeod and Archer disagreed, for example, on using incentive compensation for employees. MacLeod doubted its viability, but Archer prevailed and put her program in place.
Incentive pay is now a trend in cash management and the banking industry. Archer's customer service unit has grown into a hot line for First Union's entire commercial bank with more than 200 employees.
Maffitt, her current boss, was surprised when Archer said she still wanted to run the unit after its focus expanded and she became head of cash management.
"My first reaction was, you're going to end up with two jobs," he said. "But she was pretty persistent, she felt it tied in so closely with cash management, and she's done a wonderful job of bringing the area along."
