deployment strategy to maximize shareholder returns. In Q1, we delivered a return on invested capital of 15.3%, a significance increase when compared to fif… 12.4% in the year ago period, returning to pre-pandemic levels. Looking ahead, as… and as indicated during our Investor Day this past November, our cash allocation priority remains the same; investing in our business, pursuing accretive acqu- acquisition, and buying back our stock. With a net debt to capitalization ratio of 27.8% at the end of December, as well as $2.7 billion dollars of cash readily available, and access to more if needed, CGI has the strength and capital resources to support our build and bi-profitable growth strategy. Now, I will turn the call to George to further discuss the insights and also for our business end markets. George. Thank you, Francois, and good morning everyone. I am pleased with our teams strong first quarter financial performance. We started fiscal year 2022 with positive momentum in all key metrics: double digit EPS accretion; accelerated revenue growth on a year-over-year and substantial quarter basis; robust bookings for the quarter in the last 12 months; and cash from operations of 15.7% for the quarter. The continued strength of our financial performance is grounded in our consultants ability to earn clients trust every day. This is evident in our modernization and digitization wins in the quarter. For example, Fannie Mae extended our longterm partnership in the US. We were awarded new work to support their migration to the Cloud and implement intelligent automation and data analytics across all consumer and commercial lines of business. inaudible, a recognized pioneer in health and care and social services in Finland has expanded their relationship with CGI to assist in completing their Goggle Cloud-based transformation. This engagement aims to help optimize costs and increase business agility. The Quebec Government selected CGI to help them establish and operate a new government Cloud for the next three years. On completion, this Cloud environment will be delivering services to multiple government agencies serving over eight million citizens. Elektroskandia, the Swedish electrical wholesaler which is a company of Sonepar, the world's largest electrical products, systems, and services firm named CGI as their digital transformation partner to support their modernization efforts, including the implementation of SAP S/ 4 HANA. The French Agency for ecological transition chose CGI to deliver application services, agile scale, and DevOps to help modernize their take… technology capabilities and services, supporting over three million businesses. And in the UK, the University of Nottingham awarded CGIs a new consulting services agreement. Through this partnership, we'll help modernize their digital value chain and support of learning services for over 45,000 students and 7,000 employees. Our robust bookings in the quarter were led by awards from government sector clients, up 28% year-over-year, for a book-to-bill of 151%. We expect this uptick to continue given the governments around the world are reprioritizing their IT initiatives in line with the evolving public health and economic environment. On a sequential quarter basis, we also saw demand accelerate in the financial services sector, resulting in a nearly 40% increase in Q1 bookings and a book-to-bill of 114%. This was driven by client demand for digital services across all geographic segments. In addition to our strong performance, clients continue to recognize the depth and breadth of our knowledge and expertise, resulting in all time high client satisfaction scores. Notably, our two highest client satisfaction scores measure how we partner with clients; specifically, our level of commit, collaboration, and communication. These qualities are key elements of the world class delivery excellence for which CGI is known. In fact, client executives often raise these qualities as some of the most important priorities for their partner selection and site them as differentiators for CGI. As a people center firm, we also recognize that our success is founded on the strength of our consultants and professionals, 85% of whom are CGI shareholders. Our employee satisfaction scores also continue to be it record high levels. This is primarily due to our ongoing investments in digital tooling, self and wellbeing, and employee development. These are critical elements to provide rapid career growth for our talented employees and are therefore instrumental to our overall employee retention. As such, our voluntary attrition rates remains below the IT services industry average. Now as outlined during our recent Investor and Market Analyst Day, client demand for end-to-end digitization remains the key driver for CGIs planned profitable growth in fiscal 2022 and beyond. During that meeting we shared four areas of investment with annual and three year objectives. First and foremost, an industry knowledge to help clients in their quest to build their right future. In technology expertise to support them… bright future and technology expertise to support them in building it right and offering intellectual property assets, enabling them to build with speed. And finally, the operational excellence to help clients operate and evolve their planned future estate. Today I'll provide updates on each of these areas, starting with the right industry knowledge. We announce our plan to grow strategic business and IT consulting services revenue by 15 to 20% on a compound annual growth rate basis over the next three years. In the quarter, we saw an uptick in consulting in the systems integration demand as bookings increase by over $100 million compared with this time last year. This is due, in part, to the expansion of our local consulting practices and related increased investment in hiring and developing industry expertise. In fact, we are finalizing a new white paper which consolidates input from our board of directors, CGI industry experts, and external alliance partners to explore the key trends that will impact and shape the long-term trajectories of most global industries. Our consultants will be sharing this paper with our clients to help inform their strategic planning, and we will then discuss with clients how CGI can best support their business objectives. Our next area of investment, technology expertise, helps clients balance the potential technology with the reality of complex enterprise delivery. We previously announced our fiscal 2022 plan to increase employee training and digital technologies by 33%. A key mechanism for supporting this plan is CGI's online university, worth 35% of employees completed courses in Q1. This training enables rapid reskilling and upskilling in areas of high demand, which is scaled agile and cloud technologies. Also, in support of our technical expertise investment, we plan to add over 15,000 employee certifications of global alliance partner solutions over the next three years. So far this year, we've already surpasses 2,100 of these certifications. This has contributed to a 15% increase in bookings with our global alliance partners on a year over year basis. Leveraging our investments in intellectual property, we also announced our plan to reach 30% of our revenue derived from IP by 2025. In the first quarter, IP services and solutions accounted for 22% of revenue, up from 21% last quarter. Investments in IP globally are focused on deploying new value add capabilities across the existing IT portfolio as well as investing to cocreate with clients on new innovations for bringing in greater value to clients' digital transformation