INTERVIEW A sense of


place


As Chair of the Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership (LLEP) and Office Managing Partner of the Leicester office of globally-renowned RSM - not to mention President-elect at the Chamber - Kevin Harris is at the forefront of the region’s thriving business community. He spoke with Business Network Editor Nathan Fearn about his career to date and why he believes there’s more to come from the East Midlands.


For Kevin Harris, numbers and business have always been inextricably linked – leading him to forge an impressive career combining the two. And while he has gone on to become synonymous with


Leicester in a career spanning almost 25 years in the city, it was Birmingham-born Kevin’s experiences at university which helped influence the path his career would ultimately take. “I did a Business Studies degree initially because I still


wasn’t sure what area I really wanted to go into, but just felt I would end up in business somewhere,” explains Kevin. “From an early age I realised I was good with numbers


and that I had an interest not only in the numbers themselves but also the interpretation of them. “I had a number of opportunities when I was at


university with secondments that involved analysing financial information and I began to learn how to interpret numbers and how this can be utilised in a business. It was this that really interested me and led to me choosing accountancy as a career. “I subsequently joined the Birmingham office of a


national accountancy firm and proudly qualified as a chartered accountant a few years later in the early 1990s.” With these strong foundations, Kevin secured a role at


East Midlands-based Cooper Parry and it was there that he made his name in the regional business community - spending over two decades with the firm and rising quickly through the managerial ranks in the process. It was during this time that Kevin established a


longstanding association with Leicestershire, as he explains. “I joined the firm two years after qualifying at a time


when significant change was taking place. Within five years of joining I had made enough of a mark to be offered partnership and as part of this inherited a number of clients based in Leicestershire. At the time the firm had offices in Nottingham and Derby but didn’t have a Leicester presence. “When I entered the Partnership, I began to look for an opportunity to establish myself and the newly-inherited clients in Leicestershire presented a perfect opportunity to achieve this. “In the early 2000s, I started spending more and more


time in Leicester and successes in winning new clients to the firm led me to put a proposal to the partners to set up a new office in the city centre. Less than 12 months after making partner I sat in an office of two people - me and a PA - staring at the phones thinking “what do we do now?” The venture would prove to be a successful one for Kevin, who spent the next 15 years managing the growing


40 business network November 2018


‘I really wanted to get back into the market I knew really well. There was never any doubt in my mind that my next role would be focused in and around Leicester’


office as well as establishing himself as a key player in the success of the wider firm across the region. Despite the positive results, Kevin was keen to continue


developing, as well as solidifying roots with an area he still to this day calls home. “I learned an enormous amount during this time,” he says. “As a senior shareholder in the business I could


empathise with the clients we served, well-placed to understand the ups and downs of running a local SME. “I quickly developed a strong bond with the professional


community in Leicester and began to play a role in wider business-related aspects, initially joining the Board of the Leicestershire Chamber of Commerce and moving up to the Chair position after a few years. “Leicestershire is very entrepreneurial and predominantly


SME-based with less emphasis on the larger corporates when compared to Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. This was an environment I felt best suited to, probably because it mirrored my own position as a local business owner.” Having dedicated much of his professional life to Cooper


Parry, Kevin realised in 2016 that it was time for a change, and during a 12-month period of garden leave considered his next career move. He was determined that his next challenge would tick a


number of key boxes – including working in and around Leicester as well as aligning himself with a business that has both a local and global presence – RSM provided the perfect fit. “I really wanted to get back into the market I knew really


well. There was never any doubt in my mind that my next role would be focused in and around Leicester – that was my number one criteria,” says Kevin. “I spent the best part of 20 years creating a strong


network in this market, so that was one of the strongest attributes I had and I wanted to utilise it. “I think there are three key elements that sets RSM apart.


The first is that central to RSM’s strategy is maintaining local offices. If you look at the East Midlands, although Nottingham, Leicester and Derby are close geographically, as markets they have very distinct differences and I personally don’t believe you can best serve SMEs in each geography from a single location. The buying preferences and the ways of doing business are actually quite different in each county, so it’s important to stay local.


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