01. Copperberg Podcast

Episode 15

Aftermarket & Service in Focus: 2025 Review & 2026 Outlook

“2025 was the year the execution gaps became impossible to ignore.”

That is how Lisa Hellqvist, Managing Director at Copperberg, frames the past year in this annual year-end conversation on Copperberg Conversations on Manufacturing Matters. Drawing on hundreds of off-stage conversations from Power of 50 events, webinars, and community sessions across Europe, Lisa reflects on what leaders said they were prioritizing and what actually held them back.

02. CONTENT

In this episode, Lisa unpacks the tension between ambition and reality in aftermarket and service transformation.

While AI, sustainability, servitization, and customer centricity dominated the narrative in 2025, the real confessions pointed to deeper structural challenges: fragmentation, organizational misalignment, and a persistent lack of cross-functional ownership.

Looking ahead, the conversation shifts from reflection to direction. Lisa outlines what she calls the “slogans of 2026” — a move from evangelism to execution, from scale to clarity, and from uptime metrics to lifetime value thinking.

Inside the Episode:

  • Looking back at 2025: Execution gaps defined the year, as bold ambitions around AI, sustainability, servitization, and customer centricity collided with fragmentation, misalignment, and unclear ownership inside organizations.
  • What changed—and what didn’t: The conversation shifted from “why” to “how,” with greater focus on ROI and measurable outcomes, yet leaders continue to underestimate the human effort required to make change stick.
  • Where leaders are misreading the moment: The biggest risk is inaction, as organizations wait for perfect platforms or complete data instead of addressing real problems and building momentum through practical steps.
  • Signals heading into 2026: Credible signals include clarity before scale in AI adoption, service emerging as a strategic growth lever, and increasing emphasis on customer lifetime value over uptime metrics.
  • Advice for planning the year ahead: Start small, build ownership early, and focus on tangible progress over perfect solutions because momentum is what ultimately closes the execution gap.

Grounded, candid, and shaped by real conversations from the field, this episode offers a clear-eyed perspective on what the past year revealed and what leaders must do differently as they plan for 2026.

03. Speakers

Lisa Hellqvist
Managing Director, Copperberg

Copperberg Conversations on Manufacturing Matters is your go-to podcast for candid discussions with the industry’s top thinkers and innovators.

04. Listen now

Aftermarket & Service in Focus: 2025 Review & 2026 Outlook

05. Transcript

Lisa Hellqvist:
2025 was really the year where some of what I would brand as one umbrella theme—I would call it execution gaps—became impossible to ignore. What I mean by execution gaps is that we repeatedly heard talks about AI, sustainability, servitization (basically making money and recurring revenues off your service value proposition), and the customer centricity aspect of things.

I think the customer centricity one is still a little bit hard to grasp, but I really see how we’re moving our focus in terms of our commercial value proposition more around the value we deliver to the customer. All of that was the sort of buzzwords, but in the end, it was also what we heard a lot of sort of confessions.

So I would say the buzzwords definitely included AI, servitization, sustainability, and customer centricity. But also, if we take on the most frequently used sort of challenges, they were fragmentation, organizational misalignment, and the lack of ownership between different functions when you try to drive transformation.

Okay, let’s put it like this. Let’s call it “Slogans of 2026.” I think they will be the overarching themes that we will come across. What we will see when it comes to technology is clarity over scale. People will start small and scale up. I think we’re forced into some kind of technology adoption, especially when it comes to AI. Every organization now has to sort of figure out how to use it. It’s not so much if to use it; it’s actually how to use it. So I think clarity before scale is one of them.

The other big shift goes into the customer expectations that I mentioned earlier: service is really a strategic growth lever. It is and it has become more and more important for companies to embrace their service sides, even traditional production companies. As the customer landscape is changing and we associate the quality of a brand with the service we’re getting, the importance of service will actually also rise. So I’m thinking that this is less about uptime in 2026 and more about lifetime value—the actual, total end-to-end from production to service life cycle. So, your customer lifetime value.

Nina Roper Yearwood:
Hello and welcome to Copperberg Conversations on Manufacturing Matters. I’m your host, Nina Roper Yearwood from Copperberg. Wherever you’re tuning in from, I hope you’re keeping warm and cozy. Today’s conversation is a bit of a tradition for us here. I am joined by none other than Copperberg’s Managing Director, Lisa Hellqvist. We do this to close out 2025. We want to pause and reflect and look back at the themes that shaped aftermarket and service this year, and to think about what leaders should be paying attention to as they plan for 2026. Hello, Lisa.

Lisa Hellqvist:
Hi Nina, thank you for having me back. I think it’s been a year.

Nina Roper Yearwood:
Yes, we always love to close the year with you reflecting on the key themes that you’ve observed with the community. So Lisa, you’ve been at the center of so many of these discussions over the past year. You’ve hosted Power of 50 events across Europe, as well as numerous webinars and community sessions. You’ve been in continuous dialogue with leaders navigating change in real time. You’ve been closely involved in the evolution of aftermarket and service for well over a decade. After earning your—wow, 15 approaching two decades then.

Lisa Hellqvist:
Yeah, it’s 15 years, sorry. Yeah, I mean, it’s just crazy. Yeah, let’s keep that on the down low so no one can guess my age, but yeah.

Nina Roper Yearwood:
Yeah, absolutely. They can never tell. After earning your MBA from Stockholm University and co-founding Copperberg in 2012, you’ve helped build a global manufacturing community around these topics. So Lisa, always, it’s great to have you back. I always look forward to picking your brain for this year-end conversation.

Lisa Hellqvist:
Thank you, Nina. Always a pleasure to be back. It’s been a busy year. I probably have a lot of reflections that I hope I can be able to share with the community today. I will probably forget a lot; we only have about 45 minutes or something to fill. I hope I will make my members of the community justice and tell the story as it is.

Nina Roper Yearwood:
So let’s kick things off then. When you look back at 2025, what stands out most for you in the aftermarket and service landscape?

Lisa Hellqvist:
The privilege of working at Copperberg is really that we don’t just hear the success stories, we actually hear the confessions—the friction, the hesitations, and what people say offstage. In our formats, especially the in-person events, we get a lot of those in-depth conversations, and those are what I bring with me when I try to shape what we’re focusing on in the editorial landscape for the coming year.

2025 was really the year where some of what I would brand as one umbrella theme, I would call it “execution gaps,” became impossible to ignore. What I mean with execution gaps is that we repeatedly heard talks about AI, sustainability, servitization, and customer centricity. I really see how we’re moving our focus in terms of our commercial value proposition more around the value we deliver to the customer and the need, rather than maybe falling back on the product quality or the brand name.

All of that was the buzzwords, but in the end, we heard a lot of confessions around the fragmentations that still exist within the information flows, specifically when we boil it down to data. Organizational misalignment is another key topic. When you try to move transformation and change projects, it becomes quite clear that different functions have different visions. That mindshare between organizational units might not be that clear; they might even have different KPIs. There’s some groundwork to be done regarding the lack of ownership.

So the buzzwords were AI, servitization, sustainability, and customer centricity, but the actual challenges were fragmentation, misalignment, and lack of ownership. It’s more around the difference in maturity levels within the community. Some organizations are quietly moving very fast and getting things done, and others are still really debating the fundamentals of how to proceed, which I think is a risk.

Nina Roper Yearwood:
Hmm. Lisa, did you expect any of these that you mentioned or did they surprise you?

Lisa Hellqvist:
I would say the discussion around AI wasn’t surprising. We’ve heard it for many years now. It always takes a few years for these types of technology discussions to go from buzzword to actual business value. What surprised many leaders in our room was the scale of inertia. It was partly expected, but partly not.

The biggest challenge leaders underestimate is how hard it is to change an organization, especially when we move into service models and incentives. I was a little bit surprised that so many leaders found this as one of the main challenges—not because it isn’t, but because I thought the fact that humans are the toughest ones to onboard was now a widely known truth. I think leaders underestimate the tenancy that we need to actually be able to carry out the change management projects that we are canceling.

Nina Roper Yearwood:
Very interesting, Lisa, because it’s a recurring theme for us. I’ve been at Copperberg for five years and repeatedly it’s always mentioned a lot: change management, fragmentation, different KPIs for different departments. Could you elaborate a little bit about you being surprised about the leaders being surprised?

Lisa Hellqvist:
Of course. It is about leadership in the end. I represent a small entrepreneurial company that has agility in its DNA, so my view on change is different than the community’s view. But what I think is surprising is that we have for many years now since the pandemic spoken about agility, resilience, and adaptability as our North Star.

In the end of the day, we go into these technology projects and the success is still proven, but when we ask those leaders what was the hardest thing, they always say it was the people and the change internally. I find it interesting that we have yet not learned not to underestimate the impact of that. I’m just surprised that we still think somehow that it’s going to be easier than it is. When we get it into our corporate DNA that change is inevitable, then I think it will be a lighter lift for any leader.

I was still surprised standing at the side of the stage and still hearing the confessions on how painful it has been. We need to stop underestimating it and probably plan accordingly. Those who had a very strict agenda and onboarded carefully their colleagues—and maybe customers even—might have taken slightly longer, but they also stirred up less commotion and uncertainty.

Nina Roper Yearwood:
I would like to stay on the topic of change with you because I think change and transformation are almost synonymous in an organizational sense. In your view, what genuinely changed this year and what didn’t, despite all the noise?

Lisa Hellqvist:
Strategy-wise, we have moved the conversation from “Why” to “How,” which is a quite interesting aspect. We are getting into a more tangible action plan. Hard KPIs measuring ROI and core metrics have been more important than ever, likely because of the macro-environmental landscape and financial uncertainty. You have to be able to justify potential investments or expansion plans.

Lisa Hellqvist:
From a topical perspective, sustainability has changed. I’ve heard it as a buzzword for many years, but it wasn’t tangible for service organizations. Now I see it in almost everything we do; it is reaching the aftermarket service crowd. Then there is the AI discussion. Last year it was all over but with very little structure. Now I think the conversation has changed and leaders are asking for “AI in which context?” and “AI for what?” They are asking where it sits nicely within a specific department’s workflow rather than looking at it as a unified Holy Grail.

Nina Roper Yearwood:
I always find it interesting how you describe it as sustainability skimming the surface before and now it has kind of seeped into the core of the operations. I want to bring you now to the aspect of leadership. How are aftermarket and service leaders underestimating either the risk or the opportunity that is in front of them?

Lisa Hellqvist:
I think this is a general leadership question. One advancement is that the customer landscape is shifting. We have a new pool of younger customers with different expectations. They associate brand value tightly with the service they receive or the software they are using. Just think about the iPhone analogy; we are prepared to pay for the software and the operating system as much as the hardware.

There is also a tendency around the world where people are looking at owning less and less material things, which allows for scalability and risk mitigation for companies. This wave of owning less means you are leasing or asking for the service to be accomplished without owning the equipment.

The technology advancements we fast-tracked during the pandemic, like remote support and self-service, are paving the way for this. But the cost of waiting right now is the biggest risk. I see leaders waiting for the perfect platform rather than understanding what issue the platform is going to solve. Don’t rush it, of course, but sitting around and waiting for perfection means you aren’t moving at all.

There is also a sense that major transformations are delayed because of uncomfortable financial situations or difficulty building the business case. I understand it’s hard to put yourself out there, but transformations aren’t seeing the daylight because they aren’t funded properly. Finally, we treat digitalization or AI as an appendix happening outside the core organization. If it is an add-on or afterthought, the cultural transformation never really gets injected into the core.

Nina Roper Yearwood:
Okay, Lisa, so I’m picking up a lot of keywords from you here. Number one is about how customers are the only ones getting younger. Then the “as-a-service” aspect of almost everything. So for leaders who are maybe almost too cautious to take a step forward, what would you advise them to do?

Lisa Hellqvist:
The real risk is inaction. Doing nothing can be an active decision, but the scary part is when inaction is just a knock-on effect of things dragging out. The real risk here is inaction. If we sit down and decide not to do something, at least there is a discussion about what we would do instead.

I would tell leaders: what is holding you back? Competitors might learn faster. We just have to get started. Start with a small step. Don’t reinvent the wheel; start with something small that leads you towards the right transformation. Break it down into smaller milestones. Milestone A—like cleaning up your data—is something you will benefit from nevertheless. It doesn’t seem like Mount Everest to climb if you just see it as a hill.

Nina Roper Yearwood:
Lisa, you’re very pragmatic in the way you approach change. When you look ahead to 2026, what signals are you paying the closest attention to?

Lisa Hellqvist:
That’s a really hard question. I think AI is on the tipping point of being fully adapted into our everyday workflows. We will change some job descriptions; some admin positions will become redundant. But the impact of AI will be mitigated by humans in the loop becoming even more important for decision-making and emotional aspects.

It is also impossible to ignore the macro-environmental landscape. The tariffs created a lot of turmoil in 2025. This shifts market dynamics. We might see an enhanced demand towards Asian markets if the US becomes too expensive. We have to build on the data we have and do scenario analysis regarding global crises impacting supply chains and raw materials.

Then we have the “digital thread”—the connection of product design and R&D into service parts and maintenance. This connection will be critical when we go into uptime or performance-based contracts. Finally, self-service is a market trend to bridge the gap on the missing talent we have in field service by training our customers to support themselves remotely.

Nina Roper Yearwood:
Lisa, if you were going to look into your crystal ball, what sort of confessions or content are you expecting to hear from leaders?

Lisa Hellqvist:
I think the “Slogans of 2026” will include “Clarity over Scale.” People will start small and scale up. Every organization now has to figure out how to use AI. I also challenge the objection that “we don’t have the data in place.” AI will operate on the same data you use to make decisions today; it will just do it faster.

The other big shift is that service is really a strategic growth lever. Every service dollar is valued at three times the production dollar. As the customer landscape changes, the importance of service will rise. This is less about uptime and more about lifetime value—your customer lifetime value. I hope we see less of big transformations with no owners and less technology for technology’s sake.

Nina Roper Yearwood:
Lisa, before we wrap up, what’s one moment or conversation that stayed with you longer than you expected?

Lisa Hellqvist:
Copperberg to me is like a movement. I started noticing the impact when I started getting personal calls on my cell phone from people asking sincere questions or asking for introductions. It’s about that intangible connection you create within people. The fact that I get to be a trusted partner in that conversation makes me very happy. I hear that members who met at our pricing event have started weekly get-togethers to bounce ideas off each other. That’s a great testament to the power of uniting people.

Nina Roper Yearwood:
The ripple effect of the Power of 50, right? Lisa, thank you so much for such a thoughtful conversation.

Lisa Hellqvist:
Thank you, Nina, for having me. It was a true pleasure.

Nina Roper Yearwood:
It’s been a valuable moment to reflect on what happened in 2025 and look forward to 2026 as well. To our listeners, thank you for being with us. See you all again in 2026. Until next time.