Routing evaluates each order individually. The same brand may have one SKU filled in Texas by one pharmacy and another SKU in California by a different one, without the operator managing either decision.
The resilience benefit is the main one. A pharmacy backorder or outage becomes a routing event that resolves automatically rather than a stoppage that requires manual intervention.
Routing also determines whether a platform's incentives align with yours. A platform earning margin on medication has a reason to prefer one source; a platform earning nothing on it can optimise purely for your cost.
State coverage becomes the union of the whole network rather than the ceiling of a single partner, and adding a SKU becomes configuration rather than a new contract and integration.
Pharmacy routing, in practice
It routes to the next qualified pharmacy for that SKU and state automatically, and the exception appears in your operations queue. On a single-pharmacy setup the same event stops fulfillment until someone resolves it manually.