Start here
The Nematek guides: where to start, depending on your priority
Five questions to find the guide to read first, three reading paths for your situation, in Douala or abroad, and how we write these guides.
Contents (8 sections)
You run a business in Douala, Yaoundé or Buea, or you keep an eye on it from Paris or Montreal, and you have a specific question. What does an ERP really cost? Would my backups survive ransomware? Why does the till stop at every power cut?
This page sends you to the right guide, suggests three reading paths depending on your situation, and explains how these guides are written.
Start here: what question brings you?
| Your question | The guide to read |
|---|---|
| Where do I start with my business’s IT? | IT for a growing business |
| How do I make an Odoo project work, Mobile Money included? | Odoo ERP in Cameroon |
| Is my evening Mobile Money total right? | Reconciling MTN MoMo and Orange Money |
| What software does my pharmacy need? | Pharmacy stock software |
| Would my backups hold on the day it matters? | Backup and disaster recovery |
| How do I protect my business from ransomware? | Ransomware protection |
| How do I beat a WhatsApp or Mobile Money scam? | WhatsApp, Mobile Money and AI scams |
| How do I stop suffering power cuts and outages? | High availability |
| Can AI help me, and with what data? | AI for SMEs |
| How do customers find me, here and abroad? | Digital marketing for SMEs |
| How do I use Google AI Mode, and show up in it? | Google AI Mode |
| Which AI model should I choose, and what will it cost? | The LLM guide |
| How do I run my business from abroad? | Running a business from abroad |
| How do I keep my technical people? | Keeping your best technical people |
| I am looking for commission work: how does the ambassador programme work? | Nematek ambassador |
Check where you stand in five questions
Answer honestly, yes or no. Every “no” or “I don’t know” tells you where to start.
- Could you restore your data today, and do you know how long it would take? If not, read the backup and disaster recovery guide first.
- Does every employee have their own account, with no former employee still holding access? If not, start with IT for a growing business.
- Does your till keep selling during a power cut or an Internet outage? If not, see high availability.
- Does the evening Mobile Money total match the operator’s statement? If not, read the guide to reconciling MTN MoMo and Orange Money.
- Does a customer searching Google for your trade and your city, from Douala or from Paris, find you? If not, move on to digital marketing for SMEs.
Three reading paths for your situation
You are starting out: structure before you buy
- IT for a growing business: seven foundations in the order they pay off, and a printable checklist.
- Backup and disaster recovery: protect what you already have before adding anything; then Ransomware protection for the ten controls that stop an attack from encrypting everything.
- WhatsApp, Mobile Money and AI scams: fifteen minutes of settings for you and your family, and five written rules for the team.
- Digital marketing for SMEs: your Google profile before the website, WhatsApp before advertising.
- Google AI Mode: how your customers now search, and how to show up in AI answers.
You want management software
- Odoo ERP in Cameroon: modules by trade, a four-block budget, SYSCOHADA, and a worked Mobile Money reconciliation.
- Reconciling MTN MoMo and Orange Money: one journal per operator and the daily close in six steps, with a worked example.
- Pharmacy stock software: batches, expiry and FEFO picking, if you run a pharmacy.
- High availability: UPSs, solar, a second connection and degraded mode, so the till holds during power cuts.
- AI for SMEs: once the data is clean, what AI can really do.
You run your business from abroad
- Running a business from abroad: dashboard, access rights, control of the till and the stock, and what to set up before you leave.
- Odoo ERP in Cameroon, section “Running your business from Paris, Brussels or Montreal”: the figures to review each evening and the access rights to set.
- IT for a growing business: named accounts, multi-factor authentication and the Mobile Money PIN, to stay in control at a distance.
- Digital marketing for SMEs, section “Diaspora customers”: being found by, and reassuring, someone who cannot come and see.
- WhatsApp, Mobile Money and AI scams, section “Why is the diaspora such a prime target?”: the family code word and the call-back that beat fake relatives.
What each guide gives you
- IT for a growing business — the most common mistake is buying management software before having named accounts and a backup. The guide puts the steps back in order, including a backup connection with Camtel, MTN or Orange.
- Odoo ERP in Cameroon — which modules to start with, what a project costs, and why one journal per payment method changes everything.
- Reconciling MTN MoMo and Orange Money — one journal per operator, the daily close in six steps and the six causes of discrepancies, with a worked example in FCFA.
- Pharmacy stock software — batches, expiry, FEFO, stock counts and returns: what software must track, and what stays the pharmacy’s responsibility.
- Backup and disaster recovery — RPO, RTO, the 3-2-1-1-0 rule, a ransomware scenario in Douala and the only step that counts: testing the restore.
- Ransomware protection — how an attack unfolds, the ten controls in order of priority and the first 24 hours.
- WhatsApp, Mobile Money and AI scams — seven scams and the reflex for each, the fifteen-minute settings, and what to do within the hour.
- High availability — what “99.9%” really allows, and why power comes before servers.
- AI for SMEs — five uses that work, three that disappoint, and the rules for your data, in Cameroon and in Europe.
- Digital marketing for SMEs — Google profile, WhatsApp Business, local SEO, diaspora customers and measurement.
- Google AI Mode — opening it, knowing when to doubt it, and what makes a business visible in its answers.
- The LLM guide — who makes which models, token prices in FCFA, usage limits and what each provider does with your data.
- Running a business from abroad — dashboard, access rights, control of the till and the stock, and the daily, weekly and monthly routines.
- Keeping your best technical people — what makes a good person leave, and when to bring in reinforcements rather than hire.
- Nematek ambassador — what an ambassador does, when the commission is paid, and how to recognise a fake offer in our name.
How we write these guides
No invented statistics. We do not publish a figure we cannot attribute to a verifiable source. When an example uses numbers, it is presented as an example. When we do not know, we say so.
Sources you can open. NIST, CISA, ANTIC, OHADA, EUR-Lex, the Odoo documentation and Google’s help pages: outbound links point to official references, so you can check for yourself.
Public prices. A guide that explains how to choose without ever mentioning money is not much help. Our starting prices in FCFA are published on the pricing page, and our guides link to it.
Nothing is gated. No form to fill in to read the rest, no content held back in exchange for an email address.
The context is local. The SYSCOHADA chart of accounts, MTN MoMo and Orange Money, power cuts (ENEO became SOCADEL by a presidential decree of 4 May 2026), two working languages, the diaspora. A guide that ignores those realities describes another country.
We keep them up to date, and we date it. Each guide carries up to three dates. “Published” never moves. “Updated” changes when the content really changes: a figure, a recommendation, a section. “Checked” shows when we re-check a guide without changing anything: sources reopened, links and figures verified. When a recommendation ages, we revise it rather than let it go stale quietly.
Two languages. Every guide exists in French and English, with the same sections and the same facts.
The topics we cover, and how to follow new guides
- ERP and Odoo — scoping, modules, data migration, SYSCOHADA, Mobile Money, pharmacies.
- Cloud and infrastructure — availability, continuity, power cuts, hybrid architectures.
- Cybersecurity — backup, ransomware, scams, access management.
- Artificial intelligence — realistic uses, data, costs, searching with AI Mode.
- Strategy and business — investment priorities, online presence, teams, running a business from abroad.
- Nematek — this starting guide and the ambassador programme.
Filter articles by topic from the blog index. To hear about new guides, sign up to the newsletter at the bottom of the page.
Frequently asked questions
I only have time for one guide: which one?
IT for a growing business. It covers the seven foundations in order, points to the other guides at the right moment, and ends with a fourteen-point printable checklist. If you can only tick three boxes, you will know what to do this quarter.
How often do you publish?
On no fixed schedule. We would rather have one complete, current guide than one more article, and we revise existing guides when a recommendation changes.
Can I suggest a topic?
Yes. If you have a technical or organisational question in our areas, write to us through the contact page. The best article ideas come from real questions.
Do you write only for your customers?
No. These guides should be useful even to a business that will never work with us, including for evaluating another provider. A reader who leaves knowing which questions to ask is a good outcome.
Who writes these guides?
They are published by Nematek Solutions, from Douala. Rather than asking you to take our word for it, each guide links to official sources you can check, and presents its worked numbers as examples.
Going further
These guides explain how to decide. If you would rather discuss your specific situation, a free assessment starts from your problem rather than from our catalogue.
See also our IT services, the Nematek One catalogue and our implementation method.
Update history
- ENEO power cuts became power cuts: ENEO was turned into SOCADEL by a presidential decree of 4 May 2026 (CRTV source).
- Rewritten as a start-here page: a table of common questions, a five-question self-check and three reading paths; key points added.
- The welcome post became a page that sets out how we write and points readers to the right guide.
Only a change of substance moves the update date; a re-read with nothing to change moves only the “Checked” date. Something looks out of date? Tell us.
Sources
Sources checked
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