OEM involvement is definitely increasing, especially around data and compliance. It limits flexibility at times.
Some of it is helpful, especially when it standardizes processes, but it can also slow down decision making.

The data piece is where it gets real for us. We brought in a third party CRM two years ago that our team preferred and that was performing well on our metrics. Then our OEM rolled out a preferred vendor program with data integration requirements that our chosen vendor did not meet. The choice became: stay with the tool that works and lose certification-based incentive dollars, or switch to the OEM-preferred vendor and get the dollars but accept a tool our team did not want to use. We switched. The incentive dollars were not optional in that margin environment. What nobody talks about is that once you are on the OEM-preferred stack your customer data flows through systems the OEM has visibility into as a condition of the integration. That is not spelled out clearly in the vendor selection conversation and it probably should be.

The data compliance framing is where OEM influence gets hardest to push back on because they have a legitimate argument. When your DMS and your OEM portal need to talk to each other securely, the OEM has standing to say only approved vendors get access to that integration. The part that actually costs dealers money is when the approved vendor list is thin and the pricing reflects the lack of competition. We have one certified vendor for a specific warranty compliance tool that charges three times what an equivalent non-certified product costs. The OEM created the market and the vendor owns it. That is not standardization, that is a protected margin play.