Aftermarket & Service in Focus: 2025 Review & 2026 Outlook with Lisa Hellqvist

“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.

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 ownership across functions.

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

- What changed—and what didn’t

- Where leaders are misreading the moment

- Signals heading into 2026

-Advice for planning the year ahead

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.

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Stay Connected:

- Connect with Lisa Hellqvist on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisahellqvist/

- Join Copperberg’s online Business Manufacturing Community - https://bit.ly/3ZiYUoe

- Follow Copperberg: 

→ LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/cpprbrgLi

→ YouTube - https://bit.ly/cpprbrgYT

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Time Stamps: 

00:00 Introduction 

04:00 Key Themes in Aftermarket and Service

09:31 Surprises in Leadership Perspectives

12:17 The Shift from Why to How

15:03 Sustainability and AI in Focus

21:59 The Shift Towards Ownership and Service Models

30:43 Taking Action: The Importance of Small Steps

31:52 Looking Ahead: Signals for 2026

38:07 The Future of Technology and Service Value

45:32 Closing

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Music sourced from Pixabay - https://bit.ly/3XZ2KSE