Bionic rule merge based on first 15 characters

While tweaking a Bionic Rules that powers our NameDrop config, I ran into a need to merge datasets based on the first 15 characters of a field value.

A lot of our Telecom companies have Account::Industry values that different suffixes.... for example:

Telecommunications - IT Services
Telecommunications - IT
Telecommunications
Telecommunications - Corporate

I wanted to do a merge on companies where the industry field simply starts with "Telecommunications", regardless of what the suffix was. 

I did this by creating a formula field on Customer Info that was "Left(Account::Industry,15)" which just grabs the first 15 characters of the field value. I was then able to do my desired merge on this formula field and achieve my desired result.

Is there a way I can do this in bionic rules or MDA without making a Salesforce formula field? I anticipate this will be a common scenario in customers that adopt the NameDrop concept.