Switching from BootCamp partition to non-BootCamp partition

I've been searching through the forums, and I think I see the light at the end of my tunnel, but want to verify before moving forward ...

We have a MacBook Pro currently running Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac on a BootCamp partition. The user spends most of his time in Windows, not so much on the Mac side, and is running out of room on his BootCamp partition. Since a BootCamp partition cannot be resized, from what I can tell, would our next step be to create a non-BootCamp partition and import all the stuff from the BootCamp partition (Windows, data, etc.)? Am I understanding correctly that a non-BootCamp partition can expand as needed? And if we do this, can we then delete the BootCamp partition?

Our specs are as follows:
Mac OS: Snow Leopard v10.6.8
Windows OS: WinXP 2012 SP3
Parallels: Desktop 7 for Mac, build #7.0.15094

He has backed up all his files, and also checked the Virtual Machine's hard disk for errors as recommended.

What we're running into is that the IT person who did the original install chose the BootCamp solution, but he's no longer with the company so we cannot ask his reasons. Is there a benefit to running Windows apps under BootCamp vs. running it just as a regular virtual machine? (We're trying to get our brains around this but are not IT experts, unfortunately.)