Automating Rail Reports for GOCRP using an AI Co-Pilot

Challenge

Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire Community Rail Partnership (GOCRP) sought to improve transport services and align with the Department for Transport's (DfT) Community Rail Strategy and objectives.

They regularly collected public feedback on transport needs gaps and behaviours, particularly from families and working individuals, through community engagement events.

The main challenge was the manual and time-consuming process of generating reports from this feedback, which involved paper records, manual Excel entry, and subsequent report creation for stakeholders and local councils.

GOCRP aimed to automate this process and leverage AI for visualisations, presentations, content summarisation, and consistent branding within a Microsoft environment.

Solution

Butterfly Data developed a Co-pilot centred solution to automate report generation and data visualisation.

This involved creating report templates with reusable prompts and selecting Co-pilot after a review of suitable AI tools.

We configured a Co-pilot agent for clients to generate reports by pasting or uploading data.

For visualisations, we provided prompts to create graphs and word clouds, and for PowerPoint presentations, prompts for a foundational structure, acknowledging Co-pilot's current limitations in producing fully developed presentations.

Impact  

Our intervention significantly streamlined report generation, leading to automation and considerable time savings.

The process reduced report creation time from several hours to under 30 minutes per event.

A user guide, covering Co-pilot setup, prompts, and graph generation, enabled the client and new staff to use the system easily without training.

The product owner at GOCRP said:

Butterfly Data’s pro bono support through the Cranfield Trust has been a game-changer for our organisation. As a small community-led CIC, our capacity is always stretched but their expert input allowed us to streamline our data evaluation and reporting processes, freeing up vital time and energy to focus on what matters most: delivering impact in our communities.

Their guidance helped us move from manual reporting to smarter, AI-supported evaluation tools tailored to our grassroots programmes. This shift has enabled us to better evidence our work, respond more effectively to funders and partners, and ultimately invest more of our limited resources into direct community engagement and inclusion initiatives.

Butterfly Data didn’t just offer technical expertise—they understood our mission and helped us build systems that reflect our values. Their support has strengthened our organisational confidence and capacity, and we’re deeply grateful for their generosity and professionalism.

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