The Maple Card Game helps students grasp core business processes through tactile gameplay and direct engagement. It shows the impact of enterprise systems on integrated business activities and introduces basic decision-making and accounting involved in buying and selling products.

Problem

• Business students typically learn procurement, finance, sales, and production as separate subjects, so they never experience how a decision in one area ripples through the rest of the company.
• A lecture or a spreadsheet can explain the concept, but they can’t replicate the moment you realize a bad buying decision just killed your cash flow three weeks later.

Solution

• The game puts four players in four roles — Procurement, Production, Sales, and Accounting — so everyone owns a real piece of the business and the team succeeds or fails together.
• Every round, real constraints hit the table: supplier capacity changes, market prices shift, and cash runs thin, all with just 3 minutes to align and decide as a team.
• With no screens or complex setup, it runs in any classroom with nothing more than a deck of cards and a mat.

Impact

• Students complete a full business cycle in under an hour and walk away with a visceral understanding of why integrated systems matter.
• Faculty get a plug-and-play teaching tool they can introduce into any curriculum without needing technical infrastructure.
• The game is now used across institutions worldwide, distributed through HEC Montréal’s ERPsim Lab.

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