The only thing it really did was sever the show from it's own continuity, it's own previous two seasons. And as a viewer, that's simply disappointing to see.
Too often in Discovery the writing seems to telegraph the chaos behind the scenes and fan backlash. For instance, bringing back Culber back after "icing" accusations or bringing Georgiou back in mirror form after fans not liking her killed off so easily. None of this flows organically. You can get away with this in small doses but too much course correction and it destroys suspension of disbelief. Hence this move feels like nothing but a plot contrivance to extricate the Discovery from the prequel timeline and put it somewhere in which fans will find it harder to bash the canon violations and stylistic discrepancies. So rather than an alternate universe being used to hide the changes as in JJ Trek, they're going to lean on time. Had they simply placed the show post-nemesis in the first place it wouldn't have been an issue (at least not as much, as the Klingons would probably have still caused a stir).