Every category where a model named Excel for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Workforce planning	Workforce planning and analytics	0%	70 of 87	67%	3	under 10 labels · led by ChartHop at 31%
Goals and OKRs	Performance and talent management	0%	44 of 54	50%	2	under 10 labels · led by Tability at 29%
Org charts and org design	Workforce planning and analytics	0%	76 of 79	100%	2	under 10 labels · led by ChartHop at 27%
Succession planning	Performance and talent management	0%	99 of 99	100%	2	under 10 labels · led by Lattice at 31%
HR compliance and policy management	Core HR and payroll	0%	80 of 84	100%	1	under 10 labels · led by Rippling at 16%
Internal talent marketplace	Performance and talent management	0%	77 of 128	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Fuel50 at 26%
Leave and absence management	Core HR and payroll	0%	80 of 89	100%	1	under 10 labels · led by BambooHR at 28%
Time and attendance	Core HR and payroll	0%	75 of 86	100%	1	under 10 labels · led by UKG Ready at 15%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Excel yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment and per category, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Excel across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

ShowHide

Model	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	1	0	0	1
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	1	1
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	4	4
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	2	2
Mistral Small	0	0	0	0
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	0	0	0
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	1	1
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	1	2	3
Kimi K2	0	0	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	1	0	1
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	0	0

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct1 labelNone

Paraphrase2 labelsNone

Comparative6 labelsNone

Budget-constrained10 labelsNone

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative36 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative55 labels in all, every segment counted; 0 of the 0 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“Excel is adequate for organizations under 50 employees or teams building workforce planning capability from scratch” Claude Haiku 4.5 · Workforce planning · budget prompt · alternative

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Using Excel, Google Sheets, or static offline templates to track your organization's succession plan is a widespread but dangerous practice.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Succession planning · negative prompt · hard negative

“relying on Excel trackers for FLSA (wage and hour) or harassment training is considered a compliance failure by auditors” Qwen 3.7 Flash · HR compliance · negative prompt · hard negative

“Spreadsheets & Manual Tracking (Excel / Google Sheets) ... Why Avoid: Spreadsheets simply do not scale.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Leave · negative prompt · hard negative

“Manual/static tools like PowerPoint, Excel, or Visio: Widely criticized for becoming outdated quickly” Grok 4.1 Fast · Org charts · negative prompt · hard negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Excel, over the 55 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Excel was named but was not.

ShowHide

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Google Sheets27 of 550Not among the top eight

BambooHR17 of 550Not among the top eight

Workday14 of 550Not among the top eight

Microsoft Visio12 of 550Not among the top eight

ChartHop11 of 553Not among the top eight

Microsoft PowerPoint11 of 550Not among the top eight

Lucidchart10 of 551Not among the top eight

SAP SuccessFactors10 of 550Not among the top eight

Homebase9 of 555Not among the top eight

Gusto9 of 552Not among the top eight

A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Excel. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 33 of the 55 answers that named Excel and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

gartner.com13

theorgchart.com13

g2.com12

peoplemanagingpeople.com12

worldmetrics.org11

forbes.com10

learn.g2.com8

peerdom.com8

firsthr.app7

guideflow.com7

No domain is on file for Excel, so its own site is not marked.

Pages cited

peerdom.com/blog/best-org-chart-software8

forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-org-chart-software7

thrivea.com/blog/best-workforce-planning-tools-for-small-businesses7

gartner.com/reviews/market/org-chart-software6

joinhomebase.com/blog/workforce-planning-tools6

muchskills.com/best-org-chart-review6

teamohana.com/blog/org-chart-software6

cubesoftware.com/blog/workforce-planning-software5

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Excel

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Excel; a claim can dispute any of them.

Excel / Google Sheets + BI tools 1Excel spreadsheets 1

Follow Excel

An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.

Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Excel's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Excel, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

With a new claim: the vendor brief

A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for Excel by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:

where Excel is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
who was chosen in the answers that did not name Excel, and every reason the record gives;
a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at the vendor's own domain is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.