I'm not a big fan of considering article submission in the SEO category, but nonetheless article submissions do generate backlinks.  As you may or may not know, backlinks are an important aspect to raising your overall pagerank with various search engines. 

While article submissions are not nearly as important as they use to be, they do still provide a valuable resource to help customers find you.  Many search engines in today's web enviornment no longer consider most article submissions as valid backlinks.  It doesn't appear yet that you're penalized for having them, but don't expect every submissions to create those desired backlinks.

However, regardless of backlinks, it's important to still remember why articles exist in the first place.  They provide an opportunity for you to create credibility with future customers and/or users in the form of legitimate and sought after knowledge.  The people who are reading your articles are interested in you, your product or service and potentially your website.  

To ensure you get the maximum exposure across the Internet, it's always a good idea to submit you article to as many submission services as you can.  I can't even begin to provide you with this list, but check out some submission software like Article Submitter.

Using a product like Article Submitter will allow you to quickly submit your article to hundreds of submission services across the Internet.

Is it worth it though? Well you could do the same manually, but it's unlikely you want to spend that much time after you've just spent a great deal of time writing the article in the first place. Secondly, you probably are not going to get the same kind of exposure doing it yourself.

Software like Article Submitter isn't going to give you paid accounts at submission services, but it will help you get your article out there using your existing accounts in a heck of a lot less time than doing it yourself. For the price, you'll save enough time to pay it off with your first article submission. Give it a shot.