McGeechan has coached the British and Irish Lions on five occasions and guided London Wasps to both Heineken Cup and Premiership success.

Keen has been with UK Sport for the last eight years and went part time prior to the Olympic Games after guiding them through the build up to London 2012.

They will be reporting to Rugby Football Union chief executive Ian Ritchie, who has hailed the pair as "one of the greatest rugby brains of modern times allied with one of the most respected performance experts Great Britain has produced."

Keen has been integral to the methodical system of funding and support in place for British sport, and under his guidance Britain smashed almost all expectations during the Olympics.

They claimed 65 medals, 17 more than the target set by UK Sport, including 29 gold medals, a number unprecedented since the 1908 Games in London.

Peter Keen will call upon his experience with UK Sport in attempting to improve the fortunes of English rugby union

Speaking to insidethegames today, Keen said that they would be looking at every aspect of rugby union's performance in a bid to move forward: "I will use exactly the process that we have used here at UK Sport.

"You sit in a room for a very long period of time with all the key people and turn over every single stone which could make a difference to performance.

"You find out what is good and what is not good enough, find out best practice, you either copy it or improve it and move forward."

England floundered at the last World Cup, losing in the quarter-finals to France (pictured top, England in white) last November with a number of the team coming under media spotlight for all the wrong reasons for their antics during a poor tournament.

That led to Martin Johnson leaving his post as coach, less than a decade after he captained England to their finest hour, when they won the World Cup in Australia in 2003.

Keen has no intention of dwelling on the past, preferring to focus on current performance and what can be improved.

Leading coach Sir Ian McGeechan is one of English rugby's most respected figures

"Today there has been a lot of emphasis of looking at the past and reviewing what has been," he said.

"I only want to look forward so what I am working on with Sir Ian is where are you now.

"How can you improve the things that do not benchmark against the best and how do you come up with a plan to win.

"That is probably as much about looking forward as reviewing anything apart from where you are now."

Since Johnson left, Stuart Lancaster has since taken over and targeted reaching the top two in the world rankings.

This is a particularly crucial period for England, who will want to be competing to win the next World Cup which they host in 2015.

Keen said that he "hopes to be able to help them" achieve that objective, and insists the key is to be honest, driven and to leave no stone unturned.

"That is how it works, it is not desperately clever.

"It works when it is brutally honest and is driven by a desire to want to win."

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