A decade ago, when Gharani struck out on her own as a software consultant, she played down her spreadsheet fluency and emphasized her knowledge of higher-end financial planning software, such as Oracle Corp.’s Hyperion. She figured the more specialized expertise would yield better pay. But soon enough she found herself fielding lots of questions about spreadsheets. Like, a lot of questions. “If I went to a company to train them on the Oracle system, they kept asking me Excel questions,” she says. “The finance departments I was training all worked with Excel. Excel is just always there.”