It has appointed Mujahid Harris, the global head of CRM at Jaguar Land Rover, to the role. Harris begins the job next week and will report to Sophie Goldschmidt, commercial director at the RFU.
The RFU is already working with IBM on strategic issues, which includes developing an advanced CRM platform.
Goldschmidt said the new head of CRM would be responsible for ensuring the RFU "better manages" the data it gets from rugby fans "coming on match days, buying kits, and visiting the website".
She admitted that the RFU currently "does not manage its data that efficiently", but said the appointment of the head of CRM would allow it communicate with a broader spread of people.
Goldschmidt added that the appointment could be "quite transformational for us."
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