Interview with Hugo Mota

How did Luza come into your life and why did you choose us to develop your career?

It appeared at the right moment I guess 😊 I decided that I needed a new challenge, I wanted something that could bring me back to my previous times when I was challenged every day and with that in mind move to the next level. Luza offered me that opportunity, the opportunity to improve my hard skills and to apply to great projects on Cronos. In the last couple of years, Microsoft has been launching new features every quarter and sometimes even shorter, and we need to be looking for the legacy features as well, so keeping up to date is challenging. Luza gives us the space to grow and to focus on what is important.

What do you most value in the company and how do you expect to contribute to joint growth? What qualities stand out in you?

A service company lives from the people, which means if we are unhappy, we will produce less or with lower quality, but on the contrary, if we are happy, we will deliver with better quality and even give more to the cause. This is a human being characteristic, and we need to take care of the people that work every day with us, sometimes we can end up knowing more about our coworkers than one of our friends or family members. Luza as a new company cares about the happiness of the people that work here. 

On the business side, I like the fact we are associated with the Cronos Group and that within we have some similar companies (like Luza) that have other people with different technical, functional and cultural backgrounds.

I hope to bring good vibes, expertise and be a valued team member that others can always count on.

What is your opinion about remote work and why do you think it is a good option?

Let’s see… I worked 7 years in an office base, I used to do 500 km to go to the client site for a meeting that could easily have been an email. This was not an isolated case, this happened multiple times. Imagine how many of those companies could save in the multiple trips I did. And the carbon print I left behind also counts, right? It was not an issue of the companies I worked with at that time but the way the business society operated. I think the pandemic brought to us clarity on this subject and the companies that do not implement new changes in their way of work will not be successful or will stress by a lack of resources constantly. If you don’t trust a person to work from home, so my question is: why did you hire him/her in the first place?

For me, right now, is the best option. I have 3 kids and you can imagine how hard is to put them out of the bed in the mornings 😊 Having this flexible way of work I can better balance my personal life and my work life, in the end, I am doing both 😊I consider this one of the best benefits.

What are your main functions and skills?

I am a Senior Dynamics CE/Power Platform Specialist and I am responsible for the area.

I have more than 10 years of experience working with Microsoft technologies, with more focus on the Dynamics 365 and Power platforms. I worked in several roles on multiple projects along the way. I worked as a developer, tech lead, project manager, technical consultant and specialist. The tools I used were also multiple, like Microsoft Dynamics CRM/CE – Model-Driven app, Visual Studio, Power Automate, Power Apps, Power Pages, SQL Management Studio, SQL Server Integration Services, Microsoft Sharepoint, KingsWaysSoft, Microsoft Nav, Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Project, ClickDimensions, DocumentCorePack, etc.

I’m comfortable working directly with the client taking requirements, doing demos or being with the team doing the implementation, making decisions or leading the process.

What project are you involved in and what do you do?

I’m currently involved in two different Cronos projects, the first is to implement a model-driven app for an internal company of the Cronos ecosystem, it is an insurance business company with some specific requirements to deliver a system that can allow the users to manage their daily work with the clients, the CRM will be the front end of an algorithm that runs behind the scenes and tell the users what are the insurance policies they need to work on. The second project is a Cronos client that has a specific need to manage their stock that is stored in a financial system, our goal is to build a Canvas app to facilitate access to the data and do cross search.

How did the onboarding process go?

Really well, on Luza side, Rita and Nelson since the beginning helped me on my first interaction with the other Cronos sister companies where we also can find good people to work with. Some of our projects are made in collaboration with them.

Where do you live and what do you like to do in your free time? Is there any curiosity about you?

I live in the amazing city of Porto 😊 I have a busy “free” time with my 3 kids and my wife 😊 Most of my time I spend taking care of them and doing family trips and sometimes going to the nearest cafe is already an adventure for us 😉 Host dinners for family and friends is also something I love to do, the adults love my Sangria 😊 I also love to run and spend time catching up with a good Netflix show.

What do you expect from the future?

I normally don’t do future plans, I like to live in the present and have goals that I can start working on now to accomplish something in the future but basically, I want to grow with Luza and I think we are building an amazing team and the future can be written in several ways, our hard work will determine for where will go when that future comes.

Do you consider that we are fulfilling our claim of “We make work a positive experience? 😊 Why?

Sure, since my first talk with Rita and Nelson I knew that they were trying to build something good and different. As I said before, this kind of business has the people as the base foundation and Rita and Nelson are trying to find those not only with hard skills but with good soft skills. The goal is to deliver to our clients not only a tool but also a completely different experience of working with good people. I am glad to be part of this project.