XML::Excel is relatively simple. Just keep it simple. Here's what I did:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use XML::Excel; 

my $excel_obj = XML::Excel->new(); 
my $xls = '/root/colors.xls';
my $status = $excel_obj->parse_doc("$xls", {headings => 1});
$excel_obj->print_xml("/root/Desktop/out.xml");
if($@) {
    die "Unable to print xml\n";
}
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