The Summer ’05 release has already started to change the way I analyze data in salesforce.com, bringing forward trends that were once hard to distinguish.

The first formula I’ve started using is a simple average calculation. For example, you might want to divide the number of employees by the number of users to calculate your penetration in an account.

{!Number_Users} / {!Number_Employees}

Note that that you'll have to substitute your custom fields when building this formula but it shows you the basic design pattern.

This calculation is very similar to the way analysts do a Price/Earnings ratio so that they can get an apples to apples comparison.

I’ve also found that I’m using custom formula fields helps with categorization. For example, on the account record you might have the number of employees but for reporting purposes you want to create buckets. To do so you can create a nested if statement that looks something like this.

IF({!Employees} = 0, "",

IF({!Employees} <50, "Tier 1",

    IF({!Employees} <= 200, "Tier 2",

     IF({!Employees} <=500, "Tier 3",

       IF( {!Employees} <= 1,000, "Tier 4", "Tier 5")))))

With these two data points you can create a report to measure penetration at different tiers. I’ve left the stage, summary fields, and tier thresholds blank but it should be enough to spark some ideas for your organization.

To learn more about how custom formula fields work, I highly recommend Getting Started with Custom Formula Fields presentation and the Custom Formula Field Blog.