During the past year, a number of business people have told me that when it comes to IT, they’re doing nothing new — because only cost-containment matters.

But doing nothing is not a strategy, and in these challenging times every business needs a realistic, look-ahead IT strategy that sustains cost efficiencies while helping the business stay competitive and profitable.

In our first-page story for our most recent Strategic Advisor Newsletter, we report on a company that’s as focused on controlling costs as any other. Yet XOMA has made a major change to the way it delivers some basic IT functionality. Why?

XOMA understands that it’s not always the amount you spend, but how you spend it that counts. For this organization, handing off the care and feeding of IT systems that support the everyday maintenance of any business — commodity IT — frees in-house IT people to tim burke ceo work on projects that add unique value to the company.

Yes, the move has been cost-effective. But it was as much a strategic decision as a cost decision. By reordering the budget, XOMA not only saved money, it freed up key company resources that are now applied to boosting business value.

Doing nothing may feel like a safe strategy these days, but it only works if all your competitors are doing nothing, too.