Armstrong Craven is a long-established, enterprise-scale research firm with a consulting layer Audentia does not have. Audentia publishes its fee model and its data-ownership position; Armstrong Craven does not publish either. Those are the two differences that actually decide most buying conversations.
We publish this, so we are not impartial — but we have tried to make it checkable. Every claim about Armstrong Craven links to Armstrong Craven's own page. We name four things they do better than us. Where our models are genuinely similar, we say so instead of inventing a difference.
If you are a Fortune 500 or FTSE business buying a multi-country programme that also needs leadership-risk, succession or strategic workforce-planning consulting attached, Armstrong Craven is built for that and Audentia is not. If you want a defined research project at a fixed fee, with the dataset handed over permanently and the commercial terms visible before you make contact, that is what Audentia publishes.
How we write these pages. We only state things about another firm that they publish about themselves, and we link to the page we took it from. Where a firm does something better than we do, we say so — there are four of those on this page. Where a firm simply does not publish something, we say it is not published rather than implying it does not exist.
We do not publish competitor pricing, because none of these firms publish theirs and guessing would be both unfair and useless to you. We publish our own fee bands so you have at least one real number to anchor against.
Two tables rather than one merged scorecard, because a merged scorecard invites us to grade a competitor on criteria we chose. These are each firm's own published statements.
| Armstrong Craven | As published, with source |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1990, by Sue Craven Armstrong Craven company profile their site |
| Describes itself as | “The Global Leader in Research-driven Talent Solutions”, researching talent “for over 30 years” Armstrong Craven — About Us their site |
| Offices listed | Manchester, Southampton, New York, Singapore, Zurich, Geneva Armstrong Craven — About Us their site |
| Service range | Talent Insight, Talent Mapping, Talent Pipelining, Executive Search, Talent Sourcing, Talent Data, Project RPO, Candidate Referencing, Diversity Mapping, Location Feasibility, Employer Brand Analysis — plus Leadership Risk & Succession, DE&I and Strategic Workforce Planning consulting Armstrong Craven — About Us their site |
| Reported scale | “500+ projects each year” for “global Fortune 500 and FTSE clients, in over 120 countries” (the firm's own figure) Focus on pipelining helps corporates slash recruitment costs their site |
| Ownership | Part of WhiteCrow Group; acquired 2024 WhiteCrow Group — brand structure and timeline their site |
| Published fee model | Not published on the about page we reviewed Armstrong Craven — About Us their site |
| Published data-ownership position | Not stated on the about page we reviewed Armstrong Craven — About Us their site |
| Audentia Research | Our published position |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2012 |
| Offices | London, New York, Toronto, Paris, Hong Kong, Mumbai (HQ) |
| Model | Research consultancy. No placement fees anywhere in the business |
| Fee | Fixed project fee, agreed in writing before work starts |
| Data ownership | 100% client ownership, handed over permanently, nothing retained |
| Off-limits list | None — we place nobody, so no client relationship closes a market |
| Coverage | Stated research coverage across 70+ markets |
| Published pricing guidance | Yes — fee bands and worked scopes published |
A comparison page that cannot name a competitor's strengths is marketing, not analysis. These are real, and in each case they are things we do not do or do not do as well.
WhiteCrow Group publishes a brand structure covering five businesses: WhiteCrow Research, Armstrong Craven, Webbtree, Arpeo and Colvill Research. Armstrong Craven was acquired in 2024. If you are running what looks like a competitive tender across several of these names, it is worth confirming the ownership position before you treat the quotes as independent.
This is not a criticism. Consolidation is normal, group-owned firms are frequently excellent, and a shared parent does not make a supplier worse. It matters for one specific reason: if your procurement process assumes three independent quotes and two or three of them sit under one owner, the comparison is not telling you what you think it is telling you.
Our suggestion is simply to ask. “Who ultimately owns you, and do you share delivery resource with any other firm on our shortlist?” is a fair question, and any reputable supplier will answer it straight. The group publishes its own brand structure here.
Use these on us as readily as on anyone else. If a provider will not answer one of them in writing, that is itself the answer.
Different market definitions produce different answers, and a firm that quietly narrows the scope will look cheaper and faster. Write the boundary once and send the same words to everyone.
A fixed project fee, a day rate, an hourly research rate and a percentage of first-year package are four different purchases. Ask which one you are being offered and get it in writing before you compare numbers.
“You get the report” is not the same as “you own every record permanently and we retain nothing.” Ask whether the provider keeps a copy, whether it can be resold or reused for another client, and whether you can hire from it repeatedly at no further cost.
Any firm that also makes placements has clients it cannot approach. Ask directly which organisations in your market are closed to them. A research-only firm should be able to answer “none”, and if it cannot, that is worth knowing.
Ask for the seniority and location of the people on your project, and whether they work in the language of the market. A map of Germany researched only in English will systematically miss the Mittelstand.
Ask each firm for an example of a project where the research concluded the client's plan would not work, and what they did about it. Firms paid on placement often struggle to produce one.
Every map contains things the researcher could not verify. The question is whether they are flagged as unconfirmed or quietly presented as fact alongside everything else.
Group consolidation in this market means several apparently independent names can share a parent. If you are running a competitive tender, confirm that your shortlist is actually independent.
Armstrong Craven is a long-established, enterprise-scale research firm with a consulting layer Audentia does not have. Audentia publishes its fee model and its data-ownership position; Armstrong Craven does not publish either. Those are the two differences that actually decide most buying conversations.
On the evidence of its own published material, yes — and this page names four things it does well. 500+ projects a year across 120 countries, on its own figures, with separate primary and secondary insight teams. If your programme is large, multi-country and continuous, that infrastructure is real and Audentia is a smaller firm. Whether it is the right choice for you depends on the brief, which is what the rest of this page is about.
No, and you should not treat it as though it were. Audentia Research publishes this page and we have an obvious commercial interest in your conclusion. What we have tried to do instead is make it checkable: every claim about another firm links to that firm's own page, we name the things each competitor does better than us, and we say plainly where our models are similar rather than inventing a difference. Read it alongside the competitor's own site, not instead of it.
Yes. We price every project as a fixed fee agreed in writing before work starts, with no commission and no percentage of salary, and we publish indicative fee bands and three worked scopes on our talent mapping cost page. None of the firms compared here publishes pricing publicly, which is why this page does not attempt to compare prices — guessing at a competitor's fees would be both unfair and useless to you.
With Audentia, you do, entirely and permanently. Every record, contact, benchmark and insight is handed over, nothing is retained in a proprietary database, and you can hire from the map repeatedly at no further cost. We put that in writing because it is a genuine differentiator — but ask every provider on your shortlist the same question, and ask for the answer in the contract rather than in a meeting.
No. We make no placements and earn no commission, so we hold no client relationships that would close part of your market to us. Any provider that also places candidates has organisations it cannot approach, which in a concentrated market can quietly remove the most relevant part of a map. Ask the question directly of anyone you shortlist.
Frequently, yes, and it is a sensible arrangement more often than people expect. We are regularly engaged to run the research layer behind another provider's process, or to provide an independent read on a market where an incumbent has a commercial interest in the answer. If you have an existing relationship that works, replacing it is not always the right move.
Every statement about another firm on this page is taken from that firm's own public website or from a named third-party company profile, and was checked on 19 October 2026.
If we have got something wrong, tell us and we will fix it. Company positioning changes, pages get rewritten, and a comparison that was accurate in October may not be accurate in March. We would rather correct this page than win a deal on a stale claim.
Write to sales@audentiaresearch.com. That invitation is open to the firms named here as much as to anyone considering them — if you work at one of them and we have misrepresented you, we will correct it and date the correction.
Country pages with the statutory context built in — notice regimes, collective agreements, works councils, pay structures — each cited to the issuing authority.
Employment Rights Act 2025 timelines, notice, and Companies House as a research asset.
View the market →The FTC non-compete rule is gone; enforceability is now state by state.
View the market →Works council consent, the §622 notice ladder and the Mittelstand most maps miss.
View the market →CAO coverage at 72.5% and falling, so it can no longer be inferred from the sector.
View the market →Three notice regimes now run side by side, decided by contract start date.
View the market →Payday Super and the move to qualifying earnings changed the package arithmetic.
View the market →The fastest way to tell research firms apart is to give two or three of us the same scope and compare what comes back: the market definition, the assumptions each of us challenges, the fee basis and who owns the data at the end. We are happy to be assessed that way.