Pic Of Elton John

When compiling binaries from source, what are the real-world differences between generating pic objects or not? At what point down the road would someone say, "i should have generated/used pic. The layout of each field in a cobol record is precisely specified by a picture (usually abbreviated pic) clause.

Jan 17, 2013i need to move a pic x defined field that has numerics with a 2 position decimal to a numeric field to perform an arithmatic function involving a comp-3 field.