Automating Community Rail Reports for GOCRP using an AI Co-Pilot

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.

- Project owner, Gloucestershire & Oxfordshire Community Rail Partnership (GOCRP)

The Challenge

The Gloucestershire & Oxfordshire Community Rail Partnership (GOCRP) is committed to improving local transport services in accordance with the Department for Transport’s Community Rail Strategy. To inform their work, they regularly solicit feedback from families, commuters, and local residents on transport needs, service gaps, and travel behaviour through engagement events.

However, transforming this feedback into formal reports was manual, slow, and resource-intensive. Paper records had to be digitised manually, data had to be entered into Excel, and standardised reports had to be assembled by hand for stakeholders, including local councils. GOCRP wanted to automate reporting and reporting-related data visualisation, content summarisation and ensure consistent branding - all within a Microsoft environment - in order to shift effort away from repetitive reporting and into high-impact community work.

The Solution

Butterfly Data co-designed and implemented an AI-driven “Co-pilot” solution to automate the reporting workflow:

• Developed templates and reusable prompts for generating reports, visualisations (e.g. graphs, word clouds), and PowerPoint slides with branded structure.
• Selected and configured a Co-pilot agent capable of accepting raw feedback data (uploaded or pasted), formatting it, applying the reuse prompts, and outputting report drafts.
• Produced a user guide covering Co-pilot setup, how to run prompt-based visualisation and report generation, and guidelines for maintaining consistency even with staff turnover.

The Impact  

The intervention delivered substantial efficiency gains and improved organisational capacity. Where a stakeholder feedback report previously took several hours of manual effort, GOCRP can now generate a polished, branded version in under 30 minutes. The new system has greatly reduced the need for manual data entry and formatting, cutting down on repetitive administrative work. Staff time that was once tied up in report production is now freed up for higher-value activities such as analysis, engagement, and project delivery.
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The product owner at GOCRP said:

Butterfly Data's 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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