Bonamy Finch
Bonamy Finch, now trading as STRAT7 Bonamy Finch, is a data science, advanced analytics and customer segmentation consultancy based in Cobham, Surrey, England. Founded in 2005 by Leigh Morris, a former director of Research International, the company built its reputation on combining full-service research with deep expertise in advanced analytics — above all segmentation, of which it says it has delivered more than 2,000 studies. Since 2019 it has been part of STRAT7, the strategy, insights and analytics group created with backing from the private equity firm Horizon Capital.
Founded in 2005
Bonamy Finch was founded in 2005 by Leigh Morris, who had been a director at Research International, one of the large British research agencies of its era. Morris served as the company's managing director, with Paul Carney as deputy managing director and later managing director. From its base in Cobham, Surrey, the firm positioned itself as a specialist: not a generalist fieldwork agency, but a consultancy whose analysts could design primary research and then apply advanced statistical techniques to it. That positioning attracted a team of senior analysts; by 2013 its advanced analytics team numbered ten, and the firm had helped establish the Market Research Society's Advanced Analytics special interest group, with Morris as chairperson.
Segmentation as the signature skill
Segmentation — dividing consumers, occasions or brands into groups whose members are as similar as possible to each other and as different as possible from other groups — has always been Bonamy Finch's signature discipline. In a professional presentation in the early 2010s, the firm reported that its analysts had run over 600 segmentations in the preceding eight years, and maintained a norms database to help judge the quality of each new segmentation. Its current STRAT7-era site puts the cumulative total at more than 2,000 segmentations delivered. The techniques involved include hierarchical clustering, latent class analysis, k-means and ensemble analysis, and the purpose is practical: to give clients the granularity they need to target key groups effectively.
Advanced analytics and trade-off research
Alongside segmentation, Bonamy Finch developed strength in key driver analysis, conjoint analysis, MaxDiff and TURF analysis — the family of techniques used to work out what drives choice, what features and prices a product should have, and what range will reach the most customers. The company reports more than 500 conjoint and trade-off projects and more than 2,000 predictive models built for clients. Its stated specialisms across its history include market research, consumer insight, advanced analytics, market segmentation, brand positioning, product and range optimisation, pricing optimisation, market and category understanding, and CRM optimisation.
The data science expansion
In October 2015 Bonamy Finch launched a dedicated data science unit, led by Paul Carney, to help clients gain insight from large-volume data. The unit was designed to draw insights both from existing datasets — many of which, the company noted, had never previously been used together — and from new primary research. Morris explained the rationale: brands have access to such large volumes of data that they need help distilling the learning if the data is to have tangible value. The offer was designed to apply across almost any sector, to data as diverse as transactional records, social media engagement, footfall, website traffic and sales performance. Continued demand led to waves of hiring, including seven new staff announced in response to growth in its core specialisms, among them a director for the Research Solutions team, a director of customer analytics specialising in enriching customer data by connecting databases with third-party data, and a senior data scientist recruited from a telecoms technology firm in Finland.
Becoming part of STRAT7 in 2019
In April 2019 Horizon Capital simultaneously acquired Bonamy Finch and the Leeds-based insight communities business ResearchBods, consolidating them under a newly formed group, STRAT7, alongside LiFE, a data services start-up applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to data enrichment. The deal was the first made from Horizon Capital's first fund, which invests equity tickets of £10 million to £50 million; financial details were not disclosed. The combined group, led by chief executive Barrie Brien, the former chief executive of Creston who had been non-executive chairman of Bonamy Finch since April 2018, initially had around 100 staff across offices in Leeds, London and Cobham, and a client roster including Asda, the Coca-Cola Company, Disney, Electrolux, ITV, O2, Pernod Ricard and TUI. Within the group, Bonamy Finch's role was defined as creating actionable insight through primary research and advanced data analytics, complementing ResearchBods' customer data and intelligence and LiFE's enrichment services.
Services today under STRAT7
As STRAT7 Bonamy Finch, the consultancy now presents six areas of work. AI unstructured data analytics reveals and sizes pain points, conversation themes and trends from text and imagery, drawing on proprietary machine learning, natural language processing and generative AI, and on analysis of more than ten million online conversations. Analytics consultancy tackles clients' data-driven insight problems of any size. Customer analytics uses machine learning to personalise offerings and communications and to improve the relevance of touchpoints. Growth drivers work makes market predictions from multiple data sources to inform investment decisions. Product and service optimisation uses advanced analytics to fine-tune features, prices, promotions and messaging. Transformational segmentation tailors brands, products and communications to current and prospective customers.
Client work and recognition
Testimonials published by the company give a flavour of its client relationships. Sofia Axelsson, vice-president of brand management and global marketing at Husqvarna Group, credited its segmentation programme and ongoing support as invaluable in understanding the end customer. A senior manager of consumer insights at Pernod Ricard USA praised the quality of its work, and Diageo's global head of consumer analytics and insights described analytics across diverse data as an eye-opener that provided clear direction to take to the chief executive. A head of customer insight at a sports association reported that its ticketing pricing and strategy recommendations, based on Bonamy Finch's work, had gone to the board for approval. Industry recognition includes shortlisting in the Warc awards for a customer-centricity programme with a global insurance company, in which a hybrid segmentation — bridging database and attitudinal data through a five-step process — was operationalised across CRM and other channels, and the programme delivered overall retention growth exceeding targets by 50 per cent, alongside segment-differentiated value propositions and communications guidelines.
People and professional standing
Bonamy Finch's senior figures have been prominent in the analytics community of British research. Leigh Morris chaired the Market Research Society's advanced analytics group, and the firm's analysts have presented professional training on analytical techniques for researchers. Under STRAT7, Morris and Carney joined the group's management team alongside the founders of the sister agencies. The company's LinkedIn presence lists a team in the range of eleven to fifty employees based in Cobham, and it can be contacted through its STRAT7 website and its Surrey telephone number.
Position in the analytics market
Bonamy Finch illustrates the rise of the specialist analytics consultancy in British market research: a firm founded on statistical depth rather than fieldwork scale, which grew by making complex methods — segmentation, conjoint, predictive modelling and, later, machine learning and generative AI — usable for commercial decision-makers. Its absorption into STRAT7 in 2019 placed that specialism inside a broader strategy and insight group, but the Cobham business has retained its name, its leadership discipline and its identity as the group's analytics and segmentation house.
