Unified Navigation homepage slowness?

We are looking at finally implementing unified navigation between our hr and finance systems. We are noticing that initially getting to the main homepage after login is taking a great deal more time (than non unified navigation system). Also, even after logged in, if the user hits the peoplesoft home button/link, it again takes a good deal of time to display the homepage. Is this normal? Does anyone else have experience with this slowness when implementing unified navigation? It doesn't appear to be a caching issue as the speed does not improve over time as we use the environment. I've